A r c h i v e d I n f o r m a t i o n

   FOR RELEASE                                Contact:  Jim Bradshaw    July 22, 1994                                      (202) 401-2310

SUMMER HOME LEARNING RECIPES AVAILABLE FREE TO PARENTS FROM EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

Parents who know it's not wise to take a vacation from learning may request free brochures from the U.S. Department of Education on ways they can help their children stay active educationally during the summer.

By calling 1-800-USA-LEARN, parents, grandparents, or guardians -- any caring adult -- can request a series of pamphlets entitled, "Summer Home Learning Recipes." The text of the pamphlets is also on Internet.

"Parents and families are the first and most important teachers," said U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley, "but for busy parents it can be a real challenge to keep coming up with interesting, involving things to do. If families teach a love of learning, it can make all the difference in the world to our children."

The series includes four pamphlets targeted to grade levels K-3, 4-5, 6-8 and 9-12.

Suggestions are offered in such areas as reading, writing, math, science, problem solving and more.

Among the tips:

For grades K-3: "Napkin Fractions." This math activity helps make learning fractions fun. Fold paper towels or napkins into large and small fractions. Start with halves and move to eighths and sixteenths. Use magic markers to label the fractions.
For grades 4-5: "The Foreign Touch." This social studies project is like traveling abroad at home. Visit ethnic shops, food stores, and restaurants in your community. Before the trip, have your children find on a map different countries you will "visit." After the trip, encourage your children to talk about what they've seen.
For grades 6-8: "How Much Does It Cost?" This activity is an opportunity to put math skills to work. Help your children understand living costs by discussing household expenses with them. For example, make a list of monthly bills -- heat, electricity, telephone, mortgage or rents. Fold the paper to hide the costs and ask you youngsters to guess the cost of each item. Unfold the paper. How do the estimates compare with the actual costs? Were they close?
For grades 9-12: "The Problem Solving Habit." Teens can learn to size up a problem and come up with common- sense ways to solve it with a six-step approach.

Activities in the guides were developed and tested by Dr. Dorothy Rich, author of MegaSkills, for the National Education Association and The Home and School Institute.

Text of the brochures is also available on Internet by accessing the department's online library, "Inet." To reach the service through a gopher client, type "gopher.ed.gov" or select, "North America-->USA-->General-->U.S. Department of Education" from "All/Other Gophers in the World."

For those using World Wide Web (WWW), point the WWW client to: "http://www.ed.gov/". Once in the Inet gopher, the parenting tips can be reached through the following path: -->10. U.S. Department of Education/OERI Publications/-->4. ED/OERI Publications -- Full Text/-->9. Publications for Parents/ -->10. Summer Home Learning Recipes/.

The brochures are available through Wal-Mart stores. In cooperation with the department, each store has a "Goals 2000 coordinator" to help communities reach the eight National Education Goals by the year 2000.