How much studying is your elementary child doing this summer?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Rising 2nd grade girl:

Reads like a fiend. Just finished Little Women, for example. Read it in 2 days.

It's harder to get her to do math. School sent home a summer workbook with 35 lessons (12 questions/lesson). She does two each Sat. and two each Sun. We do arithmetic and subtraction flashcards in the car, with sums up to 12. I am open to any and all suggestions of how to make math more fun and more organic - not something stupid and boring like workbooks and flashcards. I myself was more heavily into reading so it's hard for me to think of these things, but I try!

Otherwise, she is doing weekly camps in things such as: robotics, music, chess, engineering, veterinary science, space, dinosaurs.

Read the previous posts in this thread for idea. People have shared several including card games, board games, and cooking!

Thank you!

[Anonymous]

Rising second grader. Great reader who loves reading in her free time. She is in an immersion program and completely fluent, but her Spanish reading isn't that great, mostly I think because I stopped reading to her in Spanish once she started reading in English so much and now her English reading skills have so surpassed her Spanish that she had stopped choosing Spanish and the spread was widening. Each week, we aim to do, in this order of importance:

- 4 Spanish reading activities - about 2 full pages each, with comprehension questions. They have completely changed it so that she now enjoys reading in Spanish instead of dreading it like before.

- 2-3 math activities - Life of Fred or addition/subtraction practice mostly. Just to keep up skills.

- 1 chapter of story of the world, a history book, with comprehension questions. Her school is untested in history, so I think it is a great base. But most of all, she absolutely loves it and always begs for more. I do it as a read aloud though, and I would rather she have more downtime and I prioritize the Spanish and math.

-a section of grammar island. It takes about 10 minutes and has her talking about parts of speech all week long.

- 1 geography lesson - she likes them, as they are more like purposeful art projects.

We complete this about every other week, usually in a total of about 2-3 hours, sometimes on one day, if she is in the mood, and sometimes over 3 or 4 days in little segments, often while we are waiting somewhere for another activity to start. Not a huge deal if we don't complete, but the goal is to just keep plugging along and at least do a couple Spanish reading exercises and a math exercise every week so that the concepts are solidified.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:None. DS is entering 6th. This thread has been a real eye-opener.

Where do you all live? How would you describe your culture/ethnicity/race/country of origin?

Nobody I know in my neighborhood does this, nor do DS's classmates at his independent school in DC.

Wrong. Likely every kid is doing something. We are also at private school and my DD started off the summer with a similar complaint. Talking to the moms, I have found that every kid is doing something either a workbook, camp, or tutoring. Summer break for privates this year is really long.

I'm not wrong. I know most of the parents well by this point. It's a smallish progressive private and I've known the moms and some dads for years and I seriously doubt they lie -- their kids would accidentally rat them out eventually. They're 12.

We are not a "workbooks" group of parents. That's why we pay $35k a year per kid to avoid public school pedagogy and curriculum in the first place.

[Anonymous]

NP answering the thread question:

Almost zero. Only work the rising 7th grader is doing is to read the one assigned book for the summer (assigned by the MS, not us!).

Rising 4th grader is doing diddlysquat. He'll read every now and then (we are all readers), but only books of his choosing. 90 percent of the time it's a Dav Pilkey book he's already read a dozen times before. I could not care less.

No workbooks, no parent-assigned reading.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:None. DS is entering 6th. This thread has been a real eye-opener.

Where do you all live? How would you describe your culture/ethnicity/race/country of origin?

Nobody I know in my neighborhood does this, nor do DS's classmates at his independent school in DC.

Wrong. Likely every kid is doing something. We are also at private school and my DD started off the summer with a similar complaint. Talking to the moms, I have found that every kid is doing something either a workbook, camp, or tutoring. Summer break for privates this year is really long.

I'm not wrong. I know most of the parents well by this point. It's a smallish progressive private and I've known the moms and some dads for years and I seriously doubt they lie -- their kids would accidentally rat them out eventually. They're 12.

We are not a "workbooks" group of parents. That's why we pay $35k a year per kid to avoid public school pedagogy and curriculum in the first place.

Do you plan to do SAT prep? Or are you too good for that too?

DC parents pay $35k because DC public schools are awful.

[Anonymous]

Rising 3rd grader. His school requested that they learn multiplation and division tables this summer, so we're working a bit on that - a workbook for the basic facts (one page a couple of times each week), then using flashcards to play War.

He wanted to learn cursive, so I got a book for that, but he hasn't spent much time on it yet. I'm not pushing that one, it'll be there if/when he wants it.

Other than that, his summer learning is all from chess camp, Lego Mindstorms, reading, and board games.

[Anonymous]

Rising first grader is devouring those asinine fairy books, which at least counts as reading, I guess. Also does workbooks when she feels like it, which is several times a week.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The average child can lose up to 2.5 months of learning over the summer. Completely ignoring your children's education over the summer is detrimental to their learning. Why would you willingly do this?

Of course there are ways to make it fun and the term "studying" might not be appropriate. But there should definitely be some review and some advancing going on during the summer. Whether you do specific workbooks, hire a tutor, or rely on their summer camp programs- you should absolutely be ensuring the summer brain drain does not occur in your child.

Additionally, each child learns in different ways. You know your child best. If a tutor is best for them- fantastic. If summer reading programs are perfect- go for it. Regardless of the method, just make sure you are doing something to prevent the brain drain.

Research shows that the statistic you quoted applies to certain populations. Children who are exposed to academics through camps, regular library visits, family outings, travel, family game night, etc. are not part of that number. Children who sit around watching TV and playing video games all summer are most negatively impacted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The average child can lose up to 2.5 months of learning over the summer. Completely ignoring your children's education over the summer is detrimental to their learning. Why would you willingly do this?

Of course there are ways to make it fun and the term "studying" might not be appropriate. But there should definitely be some review and some advancing going on during the summer. Whether you do specific workbooks, hire a tutor, or rely on their summer camp programs- you should absolutely be ensuring the summer brain drain does not occur in your child.

Additionally, each child learns in different ways. You know your child best. If a tutor is best for them- fantastic. If summer reading programs are perfect- go for it. Regardless of the method, just make sure you are doing something to prevent the brain drain.

I get what you are saying, but the irony is because their is significant brain drain from the average child, the school will spend 3 weeks of review at the beginning of the school year. So part of me almost feels like why exert effort to keep my son's knowledge, when it just means he will be bored to death for 3 weeks. They are going to do the weeks of review regardless of if my son has brain drain or not.

We do keep up learning, we just don't do things like workbooks and such. We do board games, reading for fun, and just learning about things for fun. Oh - and I realized that he is finally old enough to start problem solving around the house. Sure, its how to get the xbox to work when it stops working (because he could care less when the toilet brakes). But he has to google the problem, trouble shoot and figure it out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Rising first grader is devouring those asinine fairy books, which at least counts as reading, I guess. Also does workbooks when she feels like it, which is several times a week.

Holy crap. I HATED those books!!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:None. DS is entering 6th. This thread has been a real eye-opener.

Where do you all live? How would you describe your culture/ethnicity/race/country of origin?

Nobody I know in my neighborhood does this, nor do DS's classmates at his independent school in DC.

Wrong. Likely every kid is doing something. We are also at private school and my DD started off the summer with a similar complaint. Talking to the moms, I have found that every kid is doing something either a workbook, camp, or tutoring. Summer break for privates this year is really long.

I'm not wrong. I know most of the parents well by this point. It's a smallish progressive private and I've known the moms and some dads for years and I seriously doubt they lie -- their kids would accidentally rat them out eventually. They're 12.

We are not a "workbooks" group of parents. That's why we pay $35k a year per kid to avoid public school pedagogy and curriculum in the first place.

I am the PP you are replying to. My child attends a progressive school. I assure you the parents are doing this. They aren't telling you and they tell their kids not to talk about it around you because they know what your attitude is and don't want to deal with the self righteousness.

[Anonymous]

Nothing. One going into 3rd, one into 1st. They are playing with their little brother, swimming, visiting cousins, having fun.

[Anonymous]

I encourage my rising first grader to read. Most nights I'll read to him then he'll read me a beginner reading type book, though I skip it if he's tired (and other times read a lot with him during the day if he's in the mood).

Other than that, all 'studying' consists of stuff like playing scrabble, playing various card games, making a card for his cousin, counting out spare change to see if he can buy a popsicle, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Nothing. One going into 3rd, one into 1st. They are playing with their little brother, swimming, visiting cousins, having fun.

So are mine, in addition to an hour to 90 minutes of formal work spread over the course of the day. Ages 7 and 9. I don't see studying and having a fun relaxing summer as mutually exclusive. There's time in the day for both formal learning and informal unstructured time.

[Anonymous]

Rising 6th, rising 8th. The schools required a few books over the summer. Other than that, not a damned thing.