Preventing the Summer Reading Slide: Simple Strategies to Protect Your Child’s Progress

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What is the Summer Reading Slide?

You’ve worked hard all year. Your child has been showing signs of real progress in reading—maybe even for the first time ever. And now? Summer break is on the horizon.

Cue the anxiety.

For parents of struggling readers, summer can feel like a double-edged sword: your child needs a break, but what if they forget everything they’ve learned?

That concern is 100% valid. And you’re not alone.

Let’s talk about the “summer slide”—what it is, who it hits hardest, and how you can protect your child’s hard-earned gains in reading, writing, and spelling without turning summer into a battle.

The “summer slide” refers to the learning loss that many children experience over the long summer break. According to researchers, kids can lose up to two to three months of academic progress during the summer—especially in reading and spelling.

Children who are already behind in reading tend to lose even more ground, and unfortunately, they’re the least likely to catch back up.

How Long Does It Take to Recover Lost Skills?

That lost learning doesn’t magically reappear in September.

In fact, teachers often spend 4 to 6 weeks at the beginning of the school year just helping kids regain what they lost over the summer. For children with dyslexia or significant reading challenges, this time is even more costly—it’s time not spent moving forward.

And after several summers of slide, a child can fall so far behind that it starts affecting confidence, motivation, and emotional well-being.

That’s why summer support isn’t optional for struggling readers. It’s essential.

Why Struggling Readers Are Hit Hardest

Struggling readers need daily practice just to hold onto progress. Without consistent review, their reading, writing, and spelling skills develop gaps and become weaker overall.

Here’s what can happen over just one summer if support isn’t provided:

Skills that were once mastered get rusty or forgotten
Progress stalls—or worse, regresses
Children lose the confidence they worked so hard to build
School feels harder in the fall, setting the stage for more resistance and frustration

But the good news? This is preventable. And it doesn’t have to feel like summer school at home.

Fun, Effective Ways to Prevent the Summer Slide at Home

Here’s good news: you don’t need worksheets or long lessons.

You just need consistency, connection, and a few research-backed strategies that make reading practice feel doable and fun.

1. Make Reading a Daily Ritual

Daily reading doesn’t need to feel like a chore. In fact, when it’s woven into your family’s rhythm with love and intention, it becomes a familiar ritual that supports both connection and literacy growth.

Let your child pick the books. Children are more likely to engage when they feel ownership. Even if the books are “too easy,” independent reading builds fluency and confidence. Let them revisit old favorites, explore graphic novels, or choose silly stories—they’re reading, and that matters.
Use paired reading to reduce pressure. Alternate who reads—one page for you, one page for them. If they’re feeling tired or hesitant, start by reading most of it yourself and inviting them to chime in on repetitive phrases or known words. This technique is called paired reading, and it reduces anxiety while still offering exposure to print.
Make audiobooks part of your routine. Listen to audiobooks together during car rides, breakfast, or quiet rest time. Choose books with a print version and have your child follow along with their finger. This builds vocabulary, models fluent reading, and helps your child match spoken and written words—boosting decoding and comprehension skills.
Create a cozy environment. Build a reading fort with pillows, curl up under a blanket, or sit outside in the shade with a stack of books. When reading feels safe and fun, your child will want more of it.
Stay consistent, even if it’s short. Just 15 minutes a day adds up quickly. Feel free to break it up into 5 minute sessions. The key is repetition and routine. Reading daily—even for a short time—helps preserve hard-won gains and makes reading an expected, enjoyable part of life.

By making reading a special daily ritual, you’re not just preventing the loss of reading skills – you’re creating positive memories around books that will last a lifetime.

2. Use Magnetic Letters for Word Play

Magnetic letters aren’t just colorful toys—they’re powerful tools for building phonics and spelling skills through hands-on, brain-friendly practice. When children can physically move letters to form words, they’re engaging multiple senses at once—and that helps the learning stick.

Start with simple, decodable words. Choose short vowel CVC words like “cat,” “hop,” or “sun.” Say the word, tap out the sounds together, and build it with magnetic letters.
Practice swapping one letter at a time. This builds phonemic awareness and spelling flexibility. Start with “cat” and change it to “cap,” then “map,” then “mop.” Let your child guide the swaps—you’ll be amazed how quickly they start noticing patterns!
Use a cookie sheet or magnetic whiteboard. Having a portable surface makes it easy to take this game outside, into the kitchen, or on the go. If you’re using a magnetic whiteboard, add dry-erase markers for writing the words after building them.
Incorporate themes or categories. Build words related to categories such as summer fun (e.g., sun, hat, fan) or animals (cat, dog, pig). The more personally meaningful the words, the more engaged your child will be.
Praise effort and encourage experimenting. There’s no wrong way to explore with letters. Let your child make silly or nonsense words too—it’s all part of the process of learning how sounds and letters work together.

This kind of multisensory word play builds a strong foundation for reading and spelling. And the best part? Your child won’t even realize they’re doing structured literacy practice—they’ll just think they’re playing.

3. Keep a Summer Journal

Writing helps reinforce what your child is learning in reading—and summer is the perfect time to turn writing into something personal, playful, and pressure-free.

Start small and simple. Ask your child to write just one or two sentences each day about something they did, saw, or felt. The goal isn’t perfect grammar—it’s building the habit and connecting writing to daily life. If you need to share the task and write some of the words, it’s a great opportunity to model how to “sound out” a word to spell it.
Make it a shared experience. Keep your own journal alongside your child. Write side-by-side, then share your entries aloud. This models writing fluency and shows that journaling is for everyone, not just kids.
Offer structure with flexibility. Use sentence starters like “Today I…” or “I felt…” for children who need help getting started. Or provide simple prompts like, “Draw and write about your favorite snack,” or “Write a story about a silly animal adventure.”
Don’t worry about spelling. Encourage your child to sound out words and do their best, but don’t correct everything. Focus on building confidence.
Celebrate their ideas. Respond to what your child writes—ask questions, laugh at the funny parts, and praise their effort. This builds pride in writing and reinforces that their voice matters.

A summer journal becomes more than just writing practice—it becomes a memory book of their summer and a window into their thoughts. Plus, it’s an easy way to strengthen handwriting, spelling, vocabulary, and storytelling skills without it feeling like a worksheet.

4. Make It Multisensory

Summer is the perfect time to get creative with how your child interacts with words, sounds, and spelling. Multisensory activities engage the brain more deeply because they involve movement, touch, sight, and sound all at once.

Write in unexpected places. Let your child practice spelling words by writing them with sidewalk chalk, tracing them in sand, shaping them with clay, or painting them with water on a driveway. The novelty boosts motivation, and the sensory input reinforces learning.
Use gross motor movement to tap out sounds. Say a word and have your child jump for each sound (e.g., /s/ /u/ /n/ = three jumps). This works well for high-energy learners who need to move while learning.
Incorporate tools like playdough, pipe cleaners, or sensory bins. Form letters with hands-on materials or dig for word cards in a sensory bin filled with beans, rice, or pom-poms.
Sing or chant word patterns. Turn spelling practice into a chant or a rhythm. Clap out syllables, sing the letters of a tricky word, or make up a jingle for words with blends or digraphs.
Let your child be the teacher. Have them show you how to spell a word using tactile materials or teach a stuffed animal the sounds in a word. Teaching reinforces learning in a big way.

Multisensory learning isn’t just effective—it’s joyful. These playful, hands-on activities help your child internalize skills they’ve been working so hard to develop, all while making memories and having fun.

5. Play Word Games That Build Real Skills

Games aren’t just fun—they’re powerful practice. The right word games help struggling readers strengthen the exact skills they need: phonemic awareness, decoding, and spelling—all while having fun with you.

Here are a few favorites:

Say & Slide – Say a word (like “ship”) and slide a token forward for each sound: /sh/ /i/ /p/. This builds sound awareness and left-to-right tracking—no letters needed yet!
Tap & Map – Take it one step further by having your child tap out each sound in a word and map it to letters using tiles or cards (e.g., /f/ /r/ /o/ /g/ → frog). This connects sounds to spellings.

“Say & Slide” builds pure phonemic awareness. “Tap & Map” bridges those sounds to written letters. Both activities are highly effective, and they reinforce each other.

Tic-Tac-Word – A twist on Tic-Tac-Toe! Fill a Tic-Tac-Toe board with words your child is working on. To claim a square, your child must read that word correctly. Use words with target sounds like short vowels, digraphs, or blends. Great for decoding and confidence!

No worksheets. No pressure. Just joyful, skill-building fun—wrapped up in just 10–15 minutes a day.

How Dyslexia Therapy Can Boost Summer Progress (And Comes with a Guarantee!)

If your child has been working hard to build reading skills this year, summer is not the time to hit pause. It’s the perfect time to accelerate their growth—and here at Dyslexia Superstars, we want to make that easier for you.

This summer, we’re partnering with Lexercise to offer a high-impact, brain-based summer intervention that doesn’t just maintain progress—it supercharges it.

Here’s what makes it so powerful:

✅ One-on-one weekly therapy sessions with a certified dyslexia therapist trained in Structured Literacy
✅ Daily online games and practice tools designed to build fluency, spelling, and word recognition
✅ Parent coaching and involvement, so you’re never left guessing what to do at home
✅ Personalized pace and support, tailored to your child’s exact learning profile

💥 And here’s the part parents really love…

Lexercise and Dyslexia Superstars guarantee that your child will improve by one full grade level in reading within just 8 weeks—or we’ll provide an additional 4 weeks for free.

That’s not just hopeful talk. That’s a research-backed guarantee, based on structured participation, consistent practice, and expert instruction.

You don’t have to cross your fingers and hope this summer goes well.

You can know your child is on the right track—and actually gaining ground while other kids are losing it.

✅ Ready to Take Action?

Let’s make this your child’s best summer yet.

🎯 Schedule a free consultation to learn how our discounted Summer Jolt program (powered by Lexercise) can help your child gain a full grade level in just 8 weeks—right from home. With the Lexercise Guarantee, there’s no risk—and everything to gain.

👉 Click here to schedule your free consultation with Leslie Smith, certified Dyslexia Specialist, or reach out at 949-676-9017.