July 14-18 is designated as National Summer Learning Week, a nationwide celebration dedicated to ensuring all youth have accessible, high-quality learning experiences during the summer months. Those experiences can have lasting effects on young minds, which include closing achievement gaps, preventing the “summer slide” and garnering lifelong skills beyond the classroom.

Harris County Department of Education’s (HCDE) Center for Afterschool, Summer and Enrichment (CASE) for Kids team was busy June 24-27 ensuring community partners, local educators and summer program leaders have the strategies, resources and tools available to maximize summer learning. With its Summer Learning Week Training Series, CASE for Kids showcased four engaging activities partners could implement, covering science, literacy, technology and engineering/mathematics.

Among the hands-on activities were dissecting a strawberry and constructing and launching straw rockets.