[twitter]The summer vacation is underway and with it, homework.
I know, summer should be a time for the kids to get out and explore and learn and discover and just be kids. But I can’t let this 2 month break cause my boys to slide back any further.
We’ve put Zacharie back in our local private school after being disappointed by the public school system. When he went for his private assessment last week, he struggled. The books that were tripping him up were books the private school kids aced in december. Despite my son’s public school teacher saying he’s “at level,” he’s actually 7 months behind.
So there will be homework this summer. Nothing drastic. Nothing hard. Just practice. A friend of mine (Lori aka Mommyfriend) was posting about she had her kids thumbing through Summer Bridge Books. Just a couple of pages a day, maybe 20 or 30 minutes, but it’s focused on math, literacy, and language and keeps kids in practice.
So I went and grabbed a couple of the books for Charlie and Zacharie and added them to the stack of workbooks we have. After breakfast, we sit down and do a day’s worth of exercises. Charlie does connect the dots, sorting, colouring, while Zacharie works on math, reading, and writing.
Today Zacharie had to write the numbers 1-100. He had to write out the alphabet. He had to identify letters that words start and end with, and then had to do some comprehension where he filled in the blank in a sentence.
He was eager to complete the 2 pages. He whipped through them and finished with a sense of accomplishment. If we can keep up this pace all summer, Z won’t slide back any further as he heads back to the private school this fall and might even catch up a little bit.
If you’re looking for some Summer Bridge Books, here are the ones we have stuffed in the boys’ activity cubbies in our kitchen:
We’ll do this each morning, do the reading before bed, and in between there will be Hot Wheels track building, LEGO movie play acting, geocaching, camping, bike riding, skateboarding, and more.
Sounds like the perfect summer.
