Summer Slide

[NotEnoughTime]

I have heard a lot about this lately. Is this something I should be concerned about?

I don't really do much formal work with my DC over the school summer holidays (or any of the other holidays) as I believe that children need a break/rest and a chance to re charge their batteries after a busy school year. I might get my DC to do some reading (ie 15 minutes) maybe 2 or 3 times a week and he will no doubt have a project from school that he will need to complete which normally takes a couple of hours.

I don't really want him to do much more than this however I don't want him to be at a disadvantage either if everyone else has been swotting all summer He will be going into year 5 in September if that makes any difference.

I also want to add that I live in an 11+ borough and the vast majority of parents around here are keen pushy for their offspring to do very well. I would like my DS to go to GS (I have a particular one in mind) as I think he would be very happy there and my older DS already goes there and they have both said they would love to go to school together for the first day perhaps and then I fear that the novelty would wear off

I would be especially interested to hear from any teachers re the "Summer Slide"

Thanks in advance

[NotEnoughTime]

Anyone?

[Notcontent]

Well - I think it really depends on your child. I don't think reading really counts as "work" - but then again I know some children don't enjoy reading... I personally think the "slide" is real when it comes to maths and spelling, so my dd has always done reading, holiday diary and some maths work sheets. It has never interfered with having fun and the holiday diaries are great to look back on!!!!

[user789653241]

We normally carry on doing what he does during school terms.
Reading, and online works. Most of them takes about 5~10 minutes each, and ds wants to carry on, since he wants to keep his streaks to get prizes.
We also find some experiment he wants to try and do it, since we have lots of time.

[jamdonut]

I'm a primary school teaching assistant.
I NEVER made my children do work in the summer holidays, when they were at Primary school. (When they were at secondary, I encouraged them to get any work out of the way in the first week.)

We usually went on some interesting visits to places, maybe with activites ( eg English Heritage) but never formal learning. They need a rest too!

They soon catch up again when they go back to school, after the initial shock of being back!

If you really must do something with them, do it during the week before they go back, just to get them used to the idea again.

FWIW, as a stealth boast, my eldest two are at Uni, and the youngest expected to get high marks on his GCSE's this summer, and go into sixth form.

The 'slide' never made an impact on them .

Oh, and we are not in an 11+ area, thank goodness. Children in the area (officially 'deprived') manage fine, with the good comprehensive schools we have.

[user789653241]

I grew up in the country that summer holidays are just long holiday between terms.(School year starts different time from England.)
We had homeworks and projects to do during summer.
Still, a bit of routine work in the morning didn't ruin my summer holiday fun.

[EarthboundMisfit]

I have younger children, about to go into Y2. In school holidays we carry on as in term time, with daily reading, ten minutes of maths 4x a week and a weekly writing task. They read, draw or write of their own volition quite a lot too. The rest of the time is for fun holiday stuff.

[JinRamen]

I do a lot of 'learning invitations' ( both under ten) so they are learning without realising. So put out something half constructed ( d and t), pretty stones in a pattern with a pile of stones next to them (pattern making and recognition for maths), set up a pretend post office (writing and maths), a pretend shop (maths), little experiments (science), baking (maths) etc thy also usually hold a driveway stall selling toys and cookies (maths and planning). They never even know they are keeping up their skills

[JinRamen]

They also tend to read each night tongi to sleep as well.

[noramum]

In Infant the school asked them to write a diary and bring it in in the first week. So it was filled with photos, postcards and - depending on ability - a sentence to a paragraph each day.

In Juniors they have a project in preparation to the Autumn term topic. That is more time consuming and intense so I think the teacher don't do it out of "being a pain in the a*" but to really get them going.

We do handwriting practice as this is DD's weakness and 6 weeks of just a postcard here and there will mean she slips unfortunately. Otherwise we ask her to do the odd maths app when she is on the ipad anyway, 5 minutes do not hurt.

[NotEnoughTime]

Thank you everyone so far.

jamdonut I wish I wasn't in an 11+ area either but it's too late for me to do anything about it now. I think I will do what you suggest and do something the week before he goes back just to get him back into the swing of things.

I'm very of you whose DC write and read off their own back-my DS wouldn't do that. If he did I wouldn't worry too much. If he had his way I don't think he would pick up a book to read or a pen to write for the whole 6/7 weeks.

[NotEnoughTime]

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