Reply to What kind of "work" do you make your children do in the summer?

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[quote=Anonymous]I don't think there is anything wrong with being mindful of what skills you want your child to keep up with.  It is one thing to say that you will use cooking to help your kid keep up with math skills and a completely different thing to say, I want my kid to keep up with fractions so measurements with baking will be a good activity to do that with.

For me, my son is still in the addition/subtraction phase.  He is at camp all summer and will be doing plenty of vacations and fun stuff all summer.  But I will do certain things to make sure he practices.  I have a workbook for moments when he feels like "playing school." I have "math videos" (Leap Frog) for rainy days when he wants more screen time but I want to make sure it is educational. We have a few board games and card sets for family game night that include math activities.When we are at the beach collecting shells, I will make sure to do some adding/subtracting with the shells.  When we ride the metro to go to a museum we will count the stops, see how many more we have to go.  Etc. I will be mindful of weaving this adding/subtracting practice into our everyday activities.  It might not happen everyday, but it has to happen frequently enough to maintain the skillset.

Basically, I think it does take a bit more effort than just relaxing and having fun.  I don't think you can just say the summer is for fun and we will "enrich" organically.  I think you need to be mindful of exactly what skills you want to maintain/improve, and weave those skills into your activities.  It isn't that hard, but its more than just baking and going to museums.

Also- Assigning a math workbook everyday is an easy way to check off the box that you have practiced the skill. For some people and some children, that might be the best method.  It wouldn't work for us, yet.  My son likes workbooks sometimes... but not enough to do them every day.  So for us, the workbook is just another activity we can do a few times this summer.[/quote]

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