How to Help a Child With Dyslexia Over Summer
Summer Vacation and Dyslexia
It is not unusual for children to lose some of the progress they made during the school year. This is often referred to as the ‘summer slide’. Children with reading and spelling difficulties may be particularly affected if they have very few opportunities to practise important literacy skills over the break.
For children with dyslexia, learning to read and spell often requires more repetition and practice. Each successful reading experience helps strengthen connections between sounds, spellings, and meanings, making words easier to recognise and remember over time.
At Nessy, we believe summer should feel like a break, not an extension of school. It is also a valuable opportunity for children to spend time doing the things they love, whether that's sport, art, music, exploring nature, or pursuing a special interest. These experiences help children build confidence, discover their strengths, and develop the talents that often become their future ‘superpowers’.
Rather than recreating the classroom at home, focus on keeping children gently connected to literacy through enjoyable everyday experiences. Talking together, sharing stories, listening to audiobooks, playing word games, reading, and writing for real purposes can help maintain important skills while keeping learning positive and low-pressure.
Every child is different, and age plays an important role in how children engage with literacy. The following ideas are designed to help children stay connected to reading, language, and learning throughout the summer in ways that feel natural, enjoyable, and fun.
Ages 4–6
Summer is a wonderful time for young children to play, explore, and talk about the world around them. Everyday experiences, stories, songs, and games help build the language and early literacy skills that support later reading and writing. At this age, learning should feel playful, enjoyable, and part of everyday life.
Here are some easy ways to support early literacy skills, with a focus on building vocabulary, phonological awareness, and positive early experiences with language and literacy.
Tell stories together at bedtime, on journeys, or during play, encouraging your child to join in with familiar words and phrases. Stories can be told, acted out, recorded, or made up together.
Talk together throughout the day about what you are doing, seeing, or experiencing. Ask questions, introduce new words, and encourage your child to share their ideas. Strong oral language skills help children build vocabulary and word knowledge. When they already know a word's pronunciation and meaning, it is easier to connect the sounds, letters, and meaning when they see it in print. Play simple oral word-chain games by changing one sound at a time to make a new word. Toy cars, building blocks, or other everyday objects can be used to represent each sound. This helps children notice and manipulate sounds in words while having fun.
Build fine-motor skills through play. Drawing, coloring, painting, building with blocks, practicing buttons and zips, and exploring shapes in sand or water help develop the hand strength and coordination needed for handwriting. Learning how letters are formed also supports early literacy development.
Sing songs and nursery rhymes together. Pause occasionally during familiar songs and wait for your child to fill in the next word or phrase. If this is tricky, offer two choices. This helps build listening, memory, vocabulary, and language skills.
Read aloud every day, even for a few minutes. Talking about pictures, characters, and new words helps build vocabulary and comprehension. This can include books about topics that interest your child.
Ages 7- 11
Summer is a great time for children to build confidence, explore their interests, and keep reading and writing skills active in enjoyable ways. Short, meaningful activities that encourage conversation, reading, word play, and writing can help strengthen literacy skills while still allowing summer to feel like a break.
Here are some simple, summer-friendly ideas that can help to develop word reading through sounds, spelling patterns, and meaning while maintaining confidence, vocabulary, and comprehension:
Listen to audiobooks during car rides, quiet time, or before bed. Audiobooks expose children to rich vocabulary and language structures that support comprehension and word learning.
Talk together throughout the day about what you are doing, seeing, or experiencing. Ask questions, introduce new words, and encourage your child to share their ideas. Continue playing word chain games with short-vowel words and common digraphs. Change one sound at a time to make new words, such as cat, cot, dot or chat, chop, shop. This helps strengthen phonological awareness, decoding, and spelling skills.
Be a word detective. Look for words that share the same spelling pattern or belong to the same word family, such as light, night, and bright or help, helpful, helpless, and helping. Exploring how words sound, how they are spelt, and what they mean can help strengthen reading, spelling, and vocabulary.
Read road signs, menus, instructions, or shopping lists together. These provide meaningful opportunities to practice reading in everyday situations.
Encourage practical writing activities such as vacation journals, packing lists, treasure hunts, or messages to family and friends.
Keep reading and writing activities short and flexible. A few minutes here and there is often more effective than trying to recreate school at home.
Older Children and Young Teens (12+)
Summer allows older children and young teens to explore their interests, discover new passions, and express themselves in meaningful ways. Reading, writing, listening, creating, and learning about topics they enjoy can help maintain literacy skills while building confidence, independence, and a stronger sense of identity.
When your child encounters an unfamiliar word, encourage them to break it into familiar, meaningful parts. For example, preview can be divided into pre- (‘before’) and view (‘to see’). Understanding how words are built can help work out the meaning of new words and strengthen spelling skills.
Challenge your child to spot words that belong to the same word family, such as act, action, active, and activity or compete, competition, and competitor. Exploring these connections can help strengthen reading, spelling, and vocabulary.
Share interesting new words and see who can use them naturally in conversation during the week.
Use subtitles on films and television shows to increase exposure to print and vocabulary.
Listen to audiobooks while following along with the printed text or e-book.
Read books, articles, or websites connected to personal interests. After reading or listening, ask them to share the gist in one or two sentences.
Compare a book with its film or television adaptation and discuss the differences.
Encourage light, everyday writing such as messages, reviews, journals, travel plans, or notes about hobbies and interests.
Create digital projects such as videos, presentations, blogs, photo journals, playlists, or reviews.
To further support your child this summer, sign up for our upcoming free Parent Session ‘Beat the Summer Slide: Without Turning Your Home Into a Classroom’, a supportive virtual workshop designed to take the stress out of the holidays.
References and Further Reading:
General
• Nessy Learning. What I Need.
https://cdn.nessy.com/production/books/What_I_Need_DIGITAL_2020_UK.pdf
• Ehri, L. C. (2014). Orthographic Mapping in the Acquisition of Sight Word Reading, Spelling Memory, and Vocabulary Learning.
Early Years (Ages 4–6)
• International Literacy Association. (2019). Phonological Awareness in Early Childhood Literacy Development.
https://www.literacyworldwide.org/docs/default-source/where-we-stand/ila-phonological-awareness-early-childhood-literacy-development.pdf
• Collaborative Classroom. Developing Early Literacy Skills: Oral Language.
https://www.collaborativeclassroom.org/blog/early-literacy-oral-language/
• Victorian Department of Education. Oral Language to Support Phonological Awareness and Phonics Instruction.
https://www.education.vic.gov.au/Documents/school/teachers/teachingresources/discipline/english/literacy/Oral_Language_to_Support_Phonological_Awareness_and_Phonics_Instruction_Oct2023.pdf
Primary Age (Ages 7–11)
• Education Endowment Foundation. Improving Literacy in Key Stage 2.
https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/guidance-reports/literacy-ks2
• Carolyn Strom. Decoding Duo Resources.
• Katie Pace Miles and Molly Ness (orthographic mapping, vocabulary, and morphology resources).
• Nessy Reading and Spelling User Guide
Older Children and Young Teens (12+)
• Fritts, S. R., Klingner, J. K., Kieffer, M. J., Cho, E., Elfers, A. M., Martínez-Lora, A. M., Coto, M., Arteaga, J., & Solis, M. (2022). Providing Reading Interventions for Students in Grades 4–9.
https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/Docs/PracticeGuide/WWC-practice-guide-reading-intervention-full-text.pdf
• Education Endowment Foundation. Improving Literacy in Secondary Schools.
https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/guidance-reports/literacy-ks3-ks4
• Etymonline. Online Etymology Dictionary.
https://www.etymonline.com/