Avoiding the Summer Slide

Our family's philosophy has always been: work hard, play hard. And summer vacation is no different. We have lots of fun planned. Lots. But we also want to avoid the summer slide. You know, when kids do no academics for more than 2 months and go back to school with some rusty skills.

While I am not a parent who is score obsessed - far from it, actually - I cringe when I see the boys losing basic arithmetic skills because they are unused for a summer.

So, the boys will do some writing (think fun blogposts about their adventures), reading (never a struggle for us), science (think mad-scientist adventures with Daddy), typing (D loves the free BBC typing program we used last year) and - for the first time - I didn't buy math workbooks for them. We're giving TenMarks Education a try. It was recommended by R's 6th grade teacher. And so far, I like it.

The boys did the assessments last week and D spent about 20 minutes last night on the first lesson. I liked that it was only 10 questions. He went through it once. Then he was able to go back through on the ones he missed. And if he still didn't get it, the website had an easy-to-understand explanation of the correct answer. So, it wasn't just about getting the right answer, it wanted him to understand how to get to the right answer.

R tried his first lesson this morning, but I had already left for work. Not sure how it went, but I'll get feedback tonight.

Do you make your kids do summer work? If so, what kind? If not, why not? Would love to hear. Comment below. Or email me at constantmotioncamills[at]gmail[dot]com.