High SES?

What is SES?

Feel like missing something everyone knows

For my child going into 1st grade: read read read.

My kid going into 3rd grade is switching to a private and will be behind on computers & spanish so we're going to work on that.

Otherwise they do mostly nothing except play all day long.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DS (rising 4th) has to read three books at his reading level this summer for his school requirement. He's on the 4th Harry Potter book right now, so we might have to rush to get two more books read before school resumes. The school also requires mastering five math skills in IXL. In addition to the minimal school requirements, DS has to do one IXL activity and write in a "summer journal" each afternoon. Hoping to keep him from forgetting everything he learned last year.

What is IXL?

Different poster, but -- online math practice, from Kindergarten level to pre-calculus last time I checked. https://www.ixl.com/math/

Anonymous wrote:DS (rising 4th) has to read three books at his reading level this summer for his school requirement. He's on the 4th Harry Potter book right now, so we might have to rush to get two more books read before school resumes. The school also requires mastering five math skills in IXL. In addition to the minimal school requirements, DS has to do one IXL activity and write in a "summer journal" each afternoon. Hoping to keep him from forgetting everything he learned last year.

What is IXL?

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.

Anonymous wrote:What workbooks are people talking about?

I use Summer Bridge.

DS (rising 4th) has to read three books at his reading level this summer for his school requirement. He's on the 4th Harry Potter book right now, so we might have to rush to get two more books read before school resumes. The school also requires mastering five math skills in IXL. In addition to the minimal school requirements, DS has to do one IXL activity and write in a "summer journal" each afternoon. Hoping to keep him from forgetting everything he learned last year.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have great readers, so nothing else in ES. By MS, schools are posting summer assignments that have to be turned in the first week of school and you end up ruining part of summer vacation making them slog through these.

Summer brain drain isn't really a thing for high SES kids.

I would ask the teacher this. I think it's real. We are high SES.

It is real. We are high SES as well. I made the mistake of not keeping up last summer. It was tough the first month back.

Here's the thing about high SES families. Most kids ARE doing enrichment over the summer. If you are not, you start off behind.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have great readers, so nothing else in ES. By MS, schools are posting summer assignments that have to be turned in the first week of school and you end up ruining part of summer vacation making them slog through these.

Summer brain drain isn't really a thing for high SES kids.

I would ask the teacher this. I think it's real. We are high SES.

Research says high SES kids maintain or gain over the summer. Low SES kids lose a lot. And why not? My kids naturally read tons in their free time (DD logged over 5000 minutes for last summer's reading challenge), go to all sorts of camps (which between 2 kids, includes 3 weeks through CTY, 3 weeks of 1/2 day band/strings camp, VA Space Flight Academy, Girl Scout camp and glass art camp this summer) go to the pool, play with friends and, yes, do the dreaded summer math packets. Most of their friends have something similar going on (but probably with more sports, which my kids hate). They are not sitting in front of the TV all day while we work, which happens to their low SES peers. They are active and engaged with their environments. They work hard during the year, and I worry more about burnout than brain drain.

Anyway, the research: http://wesa.fm/post/separating-myth-fact-summer-brain-drain#stream/0

I think learning can be so much fun in the summer and you can sneak in "math" and reading and they not even know it. My kids love to spit water melon seeds. So they have a contest and then measure the distance and find out who spit the farthest, all math. We read recipes for making cupcakes and special popsicles. We love to sign up for reading reward programs. Its a great motivator and they love to be entered to win anything!! Hope that helps!

Anonymous wrote:What workbooks are people talking about?

Instead of workbooks, I would let them play math games online. My ES kids have fun on some of these sites. You should check out your school's website to see if they have some good online math games recommendations.

Anonymous wrote:I have great readers, so nothing else in ES. By MS, schools are posting summer assignments that have to be turned in the first week of school and you end up ruining part of summer vacation making them slog through these.

Summer brain drain isn't really a thing for high SES kids.

I would ask the teacher this. I think it's real. We are high SES.

Our ES/MS have summer math packets. My kids never finish them, but I do try to have them do it at least a few times a week. Summer brain drain is real. I notice that my DC's MAP scores in the Fall are usually lower than the previous year's spring scores.

They also like to read for pleasure, and we also go to the library and used book stores a lot.

I have great readers, so nothing else in ES. By MS, schools are posting summer assignments that have to be turned in the first week of school and you end up ruining part of summer vacation making them slog through these.

Summer brain drain isn't really a thing for high SES kids.

What workbooks are people talking about?