Summer Learning & the Achievement Gap

As part of Literacy Connects’ 60 Days 60 Ways campaign, we invite you to learn about the impact of “summer learning loss” on the achievement gap and then explore some great local resources to help keep the young people in your life engaged and thinking during the hot summer months.

Pima County Public Library offers a ton of fun, free (and educational!) activities for kids of all ages at their locations. Click here for a complete list of story times, summer reading activities, teen events, adult classes and more!

Children’s Museum Tucson offers some incredible exhibits and learning activities for younger kids, including a their interactive Science Sundays when admission is just $2 and the whole family can enjoy science-y experiments, demonstrations and more with the Museum Discovery Guides and volunteers from 10:30am to 3:30pm.  And don’t miss their newest exhibit, Investigation Station, for a variety of hands-on activities that make physics, optics, and math more fun than fireworks!

Bookmans Entertainment Exchange offers great family events with a monthly theme throughout the year as well as free weekly Summer Kids Events. This coming week there will be a great educational presentation at Bookmans Ina, Bookmans Speedway and Bookmans Grant by the Desert Museum. And if you’ve never been to a Music Hour with Nature at Bookmans Speedway you are missing out!! For a quick peek at what makes this music hour special, check out this great video (title song performed by Nature himself!).

And if you’re looking for educational fun in the cool quite of home, you can’t go wrong with Arizona Public Media’s Education website! With hundreds of games, videos and resources, kids ages 3-6 can enjoy PBS Kids while older kids in grades 2-4 can explore more advanced options on PBS Kids Go! – and parents, grandparents and other caretakers can feel good knowing that they are learning while they are playing!!