Home-Based Summer School

Like most families, my family welcomes the refreshing season of summer. We enjoy going on a summer vacation, preferably where the beach is pristine and beautiful and where the activities include snorkeling and feasting with poolside food service, watching the sunset across the horizon. Many times, just a visit to the nearby beach with packed lunches and cold drinks is enough to take pleasure from the busy lifestyles we all have. Summer is a time in our home when we can "let go" of the past academic year and rest from the daily routine the school year brought us. We take bike rides by the bay or roller blade in the park waiting for that ice cream truck to drive along. Watching varieties of summer movies is also fun and revitalizing.

Exercise Those Inquisitive Minds

Resting our bodies shouldn't mean resting our minds. Children as well as adults need to constantly exercise their brains and exercising the brains doesn't necessarily mean the same, tedious, hard homework and study routines children had during the past academic year. Exercising the brains during the summer can be as simple as reviewing the past year's academic achievements. These "review sessions" can help your child remember what he/she learned in the previous academic year and find ease in advancing to his/next grade level. Chances are your child's new teacher will brush up with last year's lessons and expectations, but that teacher will also move on to the next academic level with the students and if your child had a firm grasp of the concepts he is learning, the smoother his process will be in advancing to his grade level and maybe even be a little bit more above the average level, giving the student an immense, leading edge in the classroom.

Quality Time is Study Time

My applause will always be directed to all parents who read to and with their children. It is an uplifting way to bond and create special times together. I also encourage parents to not only sit with their children and read, but to conduct "mini" study sessions as well. I think of it as a "mini" summer school. My mini summer school with my 6-year-old son includes reviewing his first-grade spelling words, working on the basic math concepts such as adding and subtracting, telling time and counting money. For reading, we read one book in the morning and one book at night. For writer's workshop, he writes short essays once a week on the special places we visited this summer. I also work on the vowel sounds, vowel combinations such as ee, oi, oa, ea. I find that my son enjoys these study sessions because it means that I sit next to him and observe how much he has accomplished in the past year! This time of "bonding" is essential because too many times, we forget that learning is fun and that learning also means spending time with the people who are special to you. Comprehension increases when kids learn around the people they care about.

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