Summer Programming: What Do Children Say?
Abstract
Studies document that low-income children lose academic skills over the summer. Six years of reading achievement data collected by Energy Express, a nationally recognized summer reading and nutrition program in West Virginia, has established the efficacy of the intervention. The purpose of this study was to examine characteristics of a voluntary summer program that foster participation. Interview data indicates that children attend because they perceive the program as fun; large creative art (for example, full-body portraits, appliance box castles, wall murals) seems particularly important. Energy Express gives children both the fun they want and the enrichment they need in the summer.
Keywords
out-of-school time; extraxurricular activities; youth development
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PDFDOI: https://doi.org/10.5195/jyd.2006.395
Copyright (c) 2006 Journal of Youth Development
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/