Summer Learning at Camp Skillz: Education Edition
This summer, The Academy for GOD hosted Camp Skillz: Education Edition, a dynamic day camp designed to bridge the gap between school years with purpose and play. We recognize that the summer months can be a time to maintain momentum, deepen understanding, and prepare students for the next school year. That’s why we created Camp Skillz: Education Edition, a summer program designed to carry children forward in both academic content and personal development through an engaging, project-based approach.
Each week featured a unique theme and academic focus, inviting campers into hands-on learning experiences that sharpened skills, built character, and made summer memories!
Week 1: Born to Be Bold
Academic Focus: Language Arts
Inspired by The Descendants, Week One focused on identity, character, and the power of good choices. Through storytelling, journaling, dramatic play, and debate, campers explored what it means to be persons of integrity while strengthening essential language arts skills like reading comprehension, descriptive writing, and public speaking. The week culminated in song, skits, and debates performed in front of the entire camp!
Week 2: Builders of the Blockverse
Academic Focus: Science
The second week took inspiration from the creativity of Minecraft and launched campers into a world of design, engineering, and exploration. With a strong emphasis on the scientific method, students tested hypotheses, built models, and designed imaginative "block worlds" using real-world science principles.
From learning about force and motion to exploring simple machines, campers engaged in age-appropriate STEM activities that taught them to observe, question, test, and revise. Group collaboration was essential, with each team creating either catapults or creepers for the end of the week challenge. Don’t miss the photos below!
Week 3: Game On! Level Up!
Academic Focus: Math
Our final week of camp brought the energy of a MrBeast-style challenge arena to life! Campers dove into high-paced contests and games that required logic, pattern recognition, probability, and strategy. Week 3 ended with an epic obstacle course math challenge for all campers!
Learning with Purpose and Play
Across all three weeks, Camp Skillz was designed to develop not only academic skills but also confidence, creativity, collaboration, and character. Our Academy teaching staff created a fun and structured environment that allowed students to embrace summer learning with positivity.
Thank You for an Incredible Summer
Thank you to the families who entrusted us with their children’s summer camp experience. We believe our campers developed friendships, academic skillz, and memories to hold!
To all our campers: thank you for showing up, trying hard, being kind, and having fun. We can’t wait to see what next summer holds.
Until then—stay bold, keep building, and never stop leveling up!
Check out the photos below highlighting some of our favorite camp moments!
The Benefits of Summer Break & Retaining Information
If we want to keep summer learning loss from eating away at the knowledge the students worked hard to gain, we have to be proactive. While year-long learning is a possible solution at the institutional level, we want to focus on practical methods parents can try at home.
How is a break beneficial? Should parents be doing anything so students don’t “lose” what they’ve learned during the school year? Or is that a myth?
With school curriculums often building on top of the knowledge students gained the previous year, it can be worrisome to think your child might forget in a couple months what they’ve spent all year learning. While we all would hope that summer learning loss is nothing but an urban legend, research seems to prove it is a situation which needs addressing. According to the Eric Resource Center, students' test scores and assessments are approximately one month lower upon returning than at the end of the previous school year. Other research published in the American Educational Research Journal revealed students forget anywhere between 17-34% of the information they learned over the previous year. With numbers like those, you definitely don’t want to ignore summer learning loss, but what can we do to prevent it?
Combating Summer Learning Loss
If we want to keep summer learning loss from eating away at the knowledge the students worked hard to gain, we have to be proactive. While year-long learning is a possible solution at the institutional level, we want to focus on practical methods parents can try at home. Continuing to review information they learned over the previous year is one way to help concretize it in their mind, as spaced repetition is an effective way to retain information.
Create a list of the topics they covered throughout the year, and then during the summer, have them read books, blogs, or even make presentations regarding those topics. This will re-familiarize them with the material during the summer months, keeping it in their mind when school starts back up.
Start a summer Gameshow Club. With a group of your kids classmates, start a bi-weekly gameshow styled review quiz focused on a different subject each time. Each subject could be hosted by a different family, allowing for a fun review with friends all throughout the summer.
Even though they may make your kids groan, getting a workbook full of review worksheets could help keep their mind in the rhythm of learning during the summer months. If you can find age-appropriate activity sheets, it could ensure their minds stay engaged even though they aren’t in the classroom.
Find educational apps which cover the material your child learned during the year. This will give them something to reinforce what they learned, without needing to rely on an actual person to teach them. If the educational app is a game-styled one which keeps score, they could compete against other classmates throughout the summer.
Do some prep work. One way to ensure children are prepared for the next year is to start having them take the next step forward. For example, they could begin reading books aimed at the next grade level, or over the course of a few weeks, have them write a paper the length of which will be required of them the following school year. This way, they don’t feel overwhelmed when they are tasked with more difficult reading and writing assignments.
Visiting museums, science centers, or historical sites is another way of helping children keep their academic edge during the summer.
Also, don’t forget, after ten months of classes, letting children have a break can keep them from mental fatigue. While reviews are helpful during the summer, remember there are other things children can learn during the summer which they won’t learn in school so don’t lose sight of the learning possibilities which exist even outside of academics.
SOURCES:
Kuhfeld, Megan. “Summer learning loss: What we know and what we’re learning.”
NWEA.org. June 1, 2021 (visited 16 May 2022).
Atteberry, A., & McEachin, A. (in press, 2020). “School's out: The role of summers in understanding achievement disparities. American Educational Research Journal.”
https://edworkingpapers.com/sites/default/files/SchoolsOut_AtteberryMcEachin_2020_0520.pdf
Cooper, Harris. “Summer Learning Loss: The Problem and Some Solutions.” ERIC Digest: ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education. May 2003 (visited 18 May 2022.)