In celebration of National Summer Learning Day, several Moonshot Moment volunteer agencies – AmeriCorps, Big Brothers Big Sisters and The Learning Alliance – hosted a Flat Stanley-themed learning event at the Heritage Center last Friday evening. Children and parents enjoyed an engaging pajama party filled with pizza and interactive activities, and also picked up free books to take and read at home.
The event was geared toward countering the Summer Slide, the educational setback often experienced by children over the summer when school is not in session. Experts say that over the almost three months they are on vacation, children lose approximately 20 percent of the knowledge gained the previous year.
The Learning Alliance, which has been working overtime with the Indian River County School District toward the Moonshot Moment goal of having 90 percent of students reading at grade level by third grade, has created summertime events to encourage children to maintain the learning process while still having fun.
“A lot of the kids don’t do anything during the summer to keep learning so we wanted to get the community out and give them some free food, free books and have some fun things to do,” said Deidre Moore, representing Big Brothers Big Sisters as a member of the AmeriCorps Volunteer Florida 2015 LeaderCorps.
The Heritage Center was a bustle of activity, with little ones writing letters, designing bookmarks, making flat cutouts of themselves – their own versions of the Flat Stanley children’s book series – and watching a karate demonstration. There were also special guests reading stories as students from the Indian River Charter High School brought them to life by acting them out.
“Summer learning is critical but it has to be fun for the kids and parents to do it,” said Marie O’Brien, TLA Community Outreach Director. “We did the Page it Forward book drive in May and got over 2,000 books and we are giving away the books tonight.”
Guest readers included School Superintendent Dr. Fran Adams, Vero Beach Mayor Dick Winger, Sebastian City Councilman Bob McPartlan, and Fellsmere Mayor Susan Adams.
“I think the important thing is we want to show the families that reading is fun, and give them the opportunity to pick out books with subjects that they enjoy and gets them excited,” said Adams.
“There are two ways to learn about the world, one is to go there and the other is to read about it. We may not all be able to go around the world but we can always read,” said Winger, adding that he hoped the evening would encourage the children to realize that reading is the pathway to everything.
The Learning Alliance co-founders Liz Woody and Barbara Hammond were busy helping at a photo graduation booth, where youngsters could have their photos taken in cutout graduation caps and gowns with their anticipated graduation date on the diploma.
“We want them to be able to visualize their graduation and get to that very important moment,” said Woody.
Although this event was open to all families, special summer classes have also been designed to motivate children with low reading test scores.
“They have one-on-one tutoring and after school catch-up programs during the school year,” said O’Brien. “During summer we invite specific students to reading classes paired with enrichment activities. Kids get to enjoy some fun activities with tutoring to reach their grade’s reading level. They have so much fun that when they catch up they still want to come back the next year!”
