Kids are breathing a sigh of relief as schools let out for the summer. This is their opportunity to sleep in, spend time with friends and family, schedule their days the way they want to—whether that’s attending a camp, exploring the outdoors, or catching up on favorite television shows; but some parents worry about their child’s “brain drain” over summer vacation.

“Brain drain” or the “summer slide” is the learning loss that can occur over summer vacation, when kids are not always exposed to learning opportunities on a daily basis. It can cause them to fall behind where they ended the previous grade level, starting them off on the wrong foot for a new school year. Some parents try to combat this with educational camps that interest their children or through weekly library trips and summer book logs. However, there’s an easy way to keep kids learning when school is out—playing games.

The Games and Learning Publishing Council recently surveyed 700 teachers. Of those 513 who use games in the classroom, 55 percent of those teachers use games at least once a week. Gaming is becoming a regular habit within the classroom, an engaging way to practice skills and learn. While the majority of teachers are still using computers for gaming purposes, tablets are making their way to becoming an alternative mode for students’ gaming. In fact, 67% of the teachers who are not currently using tablets plan to invest in them in the next one to two years.

With that being said, if games are being used in classrooms to engage students, why shouldn’t they also be used at home? Summer is the perfect time for a child to become immersed in a long-term, educational game. Our award-winning Mayan Mysteries™ is a cross-curricular adventure that helps players brush up on math and reading comprehension skills while learning about the Maya through informational text. It’s aligned to the Common Core and National Council of Social Studies Standards, so it helps keep students on the right path for the next school year.

If your child has 15 minutes of free time, have them practice math skills with Loot Pursuit: Pompeii™. They’ll think they’re on an adventure to save stolen artifacts from the ancient Roman city of Pompeii, trying to discover the notorious thief Ladrone; but you know your child is actually perfecting his algebraic ability or mastering solving for the area of a triangle. To support summer learning, Dig-It! Games is offering Loot Pursuit: Pompeii™ for just $0.99 on the iTunes store; it’s for a limited time only.

Downloading Can U Dig It?™, Maya Numbers™, or Loot Pursuit: Tulum™ will give your child even more time to practice problem solving.

In 79 A.D., the ancient Roman city of Pompeii was smothered by the suffocating volcanic ash of Mount Vesuvius. Until a few years ago, it was widely assumed that the people of Pompeii—coated in ash and frozen into lifelike poses—met their death by breathing in the ash that encased the city. Now recent studies have shown that the heat from the eruption of the still-active Mount Vesuvius caused people to be instantly shocked, buried by ash and dust, into the emotive poses we see today.

Pompeii offers archeologists an opportunity to see what life may have been like for the people in this ancient Roman town. It also offers us the chance to understand what the people of Pompeii may have been feeling in their last moments. Scientists have been able to uncover parents cradling their children from the blast, adults clutching prized possessions.

It is these scenes that have caused the general public to be so fascinated by the ruins of Pompeii.

Inspired by the imagery of town “frozen-in-time,” Dan Smith, singer-songwriter for the band Bastille,
wrote the recent hit “Pompeii.” In an interview with Alternative Addiction, Smith said, “I was reading a bit about what happened when Vesuvius erupted and wiped out Pompeii…The pictures of reconstructed bodies in the position that they died, that stays with you. It’s just such a potent image. I was thinking about that. I imagined a conversation between two of these sort of charred bodies and the conversation they would have reflecting on the city and other things. The song really came from that.”

Pompeii similarly inspired filmmaker Paul W.S. Anderson to produce a film of the same name, released in February of this year. In an interview with Filmmaker Magazine, Anderson said, “The thing about Pompeii is you’re not free to do whatever you want. The interesting thing about Pompeii is that, of any archaeological site, it’s the best preserved because it was buried in the ash. In the Pompeii exhibits there’s a touring walk. You see loaves of bread that are kind of perfectly preserved. You see the bodies, you see how people lived, you see how they died. The frescoes and wall paintings in Pompeii are amazing and a lot of our production design was based on exactly that.” In the film, Anderson felt he had a responsibility to portray the city of Pompeii, the disaster and tragedy that struck the city, as accurately as possible.

Archeologists are also fascinated by the site of Pompeii. Our founder Suzi Wilczynski traveled extensively in the Mediterranean area as an archeologist prior to becoming a middle school teacher and ultimately founding Dig-It! Games™ to meet the learning needs of middle school students. In an interview with TDMonthly, she said, “Kids should know about ancient Rome for the reason we teach history in general- we need to be able to understand our past to understand our future. It’s important for American students especially, and European students to an extent, because ancient Rome is where our culture comes from- their art, education, food, government, all have influenced everything in our lives.”

Our newest app reflects Dig-It! Games™ dedication to providing accurate, engaging games to children that encourage them to explore cultures and develop a love of learning. Loot Pursuit: Pompeii™ sets out to turn math drills into an interactive adventure, in which students recover stolen artifacts hidden in locked boxes around the archeological site. Players must solve challenging math problems aligned to the Common Core for 6th and 7th grade standards, including algebra, ratios and proportions, fractions, integers, and geometry, to unlock the boxes and discover ancient Roman culture. There are more than 75 artifacts hidden throughout 5 various archeological sites within Pompeii. The story-based game follows Team Q—the mystery-solving crew from the award-winning Mayan Mysteries™—as they chase a notorious thief.

• 25 unique levels and three levels of difficulty;
• Cross-curriculum content (social studies, math and language arts);
• Selective practice mode to review specific skills and problems;
• Detailed factual information about Roman history, artifacts and geography;
• Randomized problems that encourage repeat play;
• Option to play timed or untimed;
• Beautiful graphics and original music that transport players to Pompeii.

Join the adventure and see the mystery of Pompeii for yourself.

Last week, Baltimore high school teacher Sean McComb was named the 2014 National Teacher of the Year. In an interview with Huffington Post, McComb said that teaching is not a “thankless” job, but one in which thank-you’s “are more private.”

It’s the middle of Teacher Appreciation Week and we’d like to say thank you to all the teachers—like Mr. McComb—who continue to inspire students to become life-long learners through engaging lessons and showing how much you care.

Here are 3 reasons why we at Dig-It! Games™ want to #thankateacher:

1) Teachers do so much more behind-the-scenes.
Students often do not realize how much work goes into creating the day that is planned out for them. They are unaware of the time teachers spend outside of that classroom. Books like My Teacher Sleeps in School remind us that students sometimes forget that their teacher has a life outside of the classroom. Teachers are at school before students arrive. They stay late for meetings, to grade, to plan, to make sure the next day goes smoothly. Teaching is not a 9-5 job; teachers deserve to be appreciated for all the extra work that goes into creating the world a student lives in for five days a week.

2) Teachers care about educating the whole child.
Teachers show up at baseball games or birthday parties or church choir performances. When a first-grader loses her first tooth, the teacher carefully wraps up the tooth to go home—this principal even wrote a note to the Tooth Fairy when one of his students misplaced her lost tooth; when an eighth-grader feels overwhelmed by equations, his teacher will stay after school to help him understand; and when a senior gets the acceptance letter for her first choice college, her teachers celebrate this victory, too. At Dig-It! Games™, we know teaching isn’t just about the curriculum—it’s about the students that are in the classroom.

3) Teachers are the ones who make school fun.
Teachers are the difference between students who love learning and students who do not. By providing students with opportunities to blend fun and learning seamlessly, teachers encourage growth and engagement in the classroom. Science experiments, field trips, hands-on learning, brain breaks, gaming—all of these are part of creating an energetic classroom environment and culture. Dig-It! Games™ is proud to offer games like Mayan Mysteries™ and Loot Pursuit: Tulum™ to teachers as a resource to keep inspiring kids to love what they learn.

There shouldn’t just be one day to #thankateacher; show teachers how much you appreciate what they do every day.