This post was sponsored by Carson-Dellosa as part of an Activation for Influence Central. I received complimentary products to facilitate my review.

Once upon a time, in another life long ago, I used to be a summer learning educator. I wrote curriculum for children from K-8 and trained youth workers who spent the warm months of the year enriching the lives of students. I was always on the lookout for materials that would help me to create challenging activities. For years I used Carson-Dellosa Summer Bridge workbooks as a complement for the activities I developed, and now as a mom, I rely on the workbooks to help make sure Ayva continues all summer long.

Did you know that if children don’t participate in educational activities over the summer that they’ll experience loss? That means a lot of the stuff that they learned during the school year gets completely erased, and they end up starting the new school year at a deficit. All it takes is 15 minutes a day to combat summer learning loss, though. In between swimming lessons, hikes, art activities, and just the lazying around that we all look forward to in the summertime, you can carve out a few minutes each day to make sure your vacationing scholar stays on target.

There are a lot of ways to make sure your child doesn’t experience summer learning loss. Here are just a few to get you started:

1. Participate in the summer reading program at your local library. If your town is like ours, your kids can win cool prizes just for reading.

2. Do hands on activities with instructions that your children have to follow in order to be successful. Cooking, woodworking, or even sewing or knitting are great examples of activities that are both fun and have an educational component.

3. Expand trips and vacation travel by having your kids chart your route on a map and do research about the location you’ll be visiting before you go. They’ll be learning and they won’t even realize it!

4. Set aside early in the morning or right before bedtime for them to complete an activity in the Carson-Dellosa Summer Bridge workbook for their grade. It’s a 10 – 30 minute activity that reviews what they learned the previous year, and helps to  prepare them for their upcoming grade, too. The way I use the workbooks is to guide Ayva through a lesson every day in the summer. We even take the books with her on vacation. At the end of each week, she gets a sticker or a prize, and when she finishes an entire notebook, we go out for ice cream or something fun like that. I want her to know that learning IS fun, and that it should be celebrated!

Do you like using Carson-Dellosa Summer Bridge workbooks with your child to combat summer learning loss over the summer? Get 25% off on the Carson-Dellosa website with the code SBA25.