Keeping up over the summer.

Usually elementary schools have summer reading lists for grade appropriate material.  They have practice workbooks for math and other subjects at bookstores, target, the grocery store.  Those are always good.  Or have him do projects that would incorporate things you know he has learned about.  Like doing a recipe together, but change the amounts, so he has to use fractions or division or whatever to figure out how much to use instead.  Or find something outdoors, like a bug or a tree that he could research and maybe make a poster board or fact sheet about.  Just make it fun so it doesnt feel like work.

IMO reading is the single most important thing. Lily has been reading semi nightly, still. We've also played card games like War and Poker...so she can keep sharp on her numbers.

I agree about reading, we try to have reading time every day, although it doesn't always end up being every day....and for my son who has a bit more trouble in school than his sister, I got the Summer Bridge workbooks, it'll say for grades 3 going into 4, like that. They were recommended by his teacher, he has said he actually finds them easy, but he is a kid who really needs something to do, and I think it's helped him.

I read to my son every day.  He's fourteen months.  He shuffles across the floor on one knee with a book in each hand yelling.  I'm so proud of that boy.

How old is he?  Grade 4 would be what, eight? ish?

I taught my niece a card game to help her with her number bonds (8 plus 2, 6 plus 4 etc).  It's like snap but instead of saying SNAP when they LOOK the same, you say TEN! when they add up to ten.  There's a version she does on her own with a pack of cards too, where she lays out nine cards face up in a grid and if there are any two cards that add up to ten, she covers each one with another card face up.  The object is to get rid of all the cards.

 Oh I agree about the reading thing too.  He's pretty good at reading, but sometimes I'm not sure his comprehension is where it should be.  His teacher isn't concerned though.  He reads tons, but not books.  He's into the video games that have tons of reading involved, plus he plays with those pokemon and yu-gi-oh cards with his little friends and a fair amount of reading goes into that.  My concern is more that he doesn't really follow a story line when he reads.  He can ramble off facts no problem, but ask him what happened in a certain chapter we just read together, and he just recites one or two lines like that is all he retained.  It bothers me I think because at that age, I was such an avid reader.  I remember going into the bookstore everyday, just waiting for the new Babysitter's Club book to come in.  They came in two at a time and I would get both of them and be finished them in 2 days and have to wait all over again.  I guess we live in a different age now...

 Chuffy, he's 9.  Cards are a good idea.  He loves cards.  I think its time he learned Crib.  And maybe we could do your game but with multiplication tables.  Perhaps up the anti a bit and say the answer when the suit is the same?

Lily, who's 7 reads those Junie B Jones books...and Magic Treehouse ones. She can tell you the story when she's done, that's kind of her reading style...but consequentially...she will miss individual words in favor of a concept...or in cases of dialects in reading...she'll read what SHOULD grammatically be there instead of what she actually sees.

She was NOT a natural reader and her reading readiness skills...rhyming, sounding out...came VERY late for our school system...almost til the end of Kindergarten ( I worried...A LOT, lol). She improved by leaps and bounds this year tho'.

It's hard but I'd maybe consider something to get that comp. going...maybe...couldn't hurt?