With school holidays coming up, Inez Bailey recently spoke on the Pat Kenny Show to highlight how helpmykidlearn.ie can help kids avoid the dreaded ‘Summer Slide’.

The Summer Slide is what happens to children when a lack of suitable mental and physical activities during the summer leads to them losing some of the learning gains they made during the previous school year.

“Play is one of the most effective ways of developing family literacy and avoiding the Summer Slide,” says Inez. “Family literacy is about the way families use and develop literacy and numeracy skills together in the home. NALA’s helpmykidlearn.ie website is packed full of fun, free activities that mixes the old with the new, from card games and hopscotch that help practise maths, to children’s e-books and apps for reading and pleasure. All you have to do is enter your child’s age into the website and you will find lots of suitable fun activities to do with them to ensure they don’t lose the valuable skills they learned during the year.”

Listen to Inez’s interview on the Pat Kenny Show here.

Download a factsheet on family literacy here.

Further information:
www.helpmykidlearn.ie was developed by the National Adult Literacy Agency (NALA) and supported by the Department of Education and Skills (DES) as part of the actions outlined in national strategy to improve literacy and numeracy among young people: ‘Literacy and Numeracy for Learning and Life’ (DES 2011). It recognises that parents who are engaged in their child’s learning have a significant positive impact on a child’s educational achievement, especially in literacy and numeracy.