Could your 10yo do this school assignment?

[HerRoyalNotness]

I had an email to say they were missing an assignment from Monday, so I had a look at what it was. They’d been talking about and I thought they were on top of it.

They had to plan a trip overseas for three days with a budget of $20k. The information they needed to include was:

Destination
Flight and costs
Why you chose destination
Hotel and cost
Amenities at hotel
3 days of 3 meals naming a restaurant, meal choice and cost incl drinks
3 days of 3 activities per day naming activity, cost per person and total
Total cost overall.

It’s for maths.

YABU - yes my 10yo could complete that
YANBU - no, they’d need a lot of help/guidance.

Mine would be able to do the maths part, but would probably look up 'amenities'!

Mine could do flights and hotel, however she'd also pick an all inclusive resort as we have stayed in many so she knows it includes all food/drinks 👌

Amenities I doubt she'd know but she asks alexa and then me if she still doesn't understand.

I don’t understand why your son didn’t either look up “amenities” in the dictionary, or Google it?

O.P

www.visitberlin.de/en/kaiser-wilhelm-memorial-church

The maths wouldn’t be the difficult bit, but my 10 year old would have no idea about looking for flights. I doubt they could use say Expedia without some input. Or where to look for the price of meals in a foreign country.

I did this assignment in year 7. I had to plan a trip from the UK to Queensland - turned out it would help me later on when I went travelling!

@combatbarbie

Mine could do flights and hotel, however she'd also pick an all inclusive resort as we have stayed in many so she knows it includes all food/drinks 👌

Amenities I doubt she'd know but she asks alexa and then me if she still doesn't understand.

Yes, we picked a hotel with breakfast included. Did a restaurant for first lunch near the tiergarten and then the next two days we’ve put we’ll chose a restaurant while we’re walking around, approx cost EURxxx then I showed him how to convert to USD.

The teacher would have prepared the children for that assignment with a lesson or a series of lessons as the foundation. I’m finding my son’s year 3 maths quite perplexing at times but that’s because I haven’t sat in on the lesson. When I did sit in on the lesson I rhen had the foundation of understanding that made the questions pretty simple.

So my suggestion would be that your child rewatches the class/Es that led up to the assignment.

@CheetasOnFajitas

I don’t understand why your son didn’t either look up “amenities” in the dictionary, or Google it?

Me neither. He is smart in his own way, but gets Roadblocked on obvious things, like asking for help

[quote YetAnotherSpartacus]O.P

www.visitberlin.de/en/kaiser-wilhelm-memorial-church[/quote]
Thanks! I’ll use the site with him today to find some other things too

@AaronPurr

It's great for maths because it's definitely a subject that you need in life

I disagree. There are plenty who will never need to be able to book a holiday abroad, let alone a 20k trip for 3 days.

And you can't see any transferable learning? This person will never need to select from catalogues, never need to add up a long list of totals, will never need to look at a budget and cross out items they wanted but find they can't afford? A child who is ten now will probably be spending that sort of money on holidays when they are old enough to pay for one. I paid £20k for my first house.

The vast majority of my Y5 class last year would not have been able to complete that, certainly not independently.

I think it's an awful assignment

Maybe 1% of the country can afford 20,000 for a 3 day holiday. At the moment no one has any holidays anywhere.

Why not figuring out how to buy the most food within a certain budget? How to make a monthly budget for rent, bills etc?

Or at least make it a UK trip with a smaller budget

@TurkeyTrot

Mine could have done most of it at 10, but would be quite confused about what 'amenities at hotel' means

That then becomes a language opportunity, look it up!

This is similar to tasks we would use at the start of Year 7, a getting to know you group activity, but it was pre-internet and we provided lots of material to find information. I think the 10 year olds of my acquaintance could tackle this task although as has been said the girls would probably find it easier, we found that the boys would leave out important things.

$20K for three days though

@OppsUpsSide

The vast majority of my Y5 class last year would not have been able to complete that, certainly not independently.

I don't think they are unusual in that regard. It's a very abstract task especially for those who have never been on holiday.

OP for Berlin you must go to the Soviet war memorial in Treptower Park, it's massive and really fascinating (a nice park too)

It's not WW2 but I'd suggest the Wall memorial on Bernauer Strasse, there's a whole walk you can do with lots of different outdoor exhibits and parts of the old Wall, memorials to people who died trying to escape.

The history is everywhere. The boat tours on the Spree are pretty good with lots of historical comments.

Yes, sounds like the kind of thing my kids presented to me pitching for holidays (which we suitably ignored)

Was the budget really set in $, not in GBP? That opens up a whole extra element of complexity with having to calculate exchange rates? (Or are you in a country that has a $ currency?)

God no. My 10yo would not be able to do that. Not in a million years. I was always quite happy with his work and level of aptitude until homeschooling and seeing the type of work he's submitting. And now I'm in despair about him moving up to secondary school.

DD is 9, in yr5 and enjoyed doing this before the Christmas break in school. Crucially though, they were guided through the tasks and the different elements, and worked it out with a partner then presented back to the class. As an independent task I think it's a huge ask at this age.

My 10 yo DS would be able to do the maths involved but would struggle with the assignment as a whole because there are so many parts to it. He would definitely need guidance to get it organised but could do it once broken down into bitesize chunks. Not great when parents are wfh while schooling.

@CheetasOnFajitas

Was the budget really set in $, not in GBP? That opens up a whole extra element of complexity with having to calculate exchange rates? (Or are you in a country that has a $ currency?)

Sorry I saw you did cover this. But are you actually based in the United States?

I'm not sure.

DD would probably have loved this at 10 but she's always been a planner.

DS is year 4 and had a similar type of thing this morning but on a much much smaller scale. He was given a budget of £10 and told to choose a recipe, find out how much the ingredients would cost in full pack sizes and then work out how much the specific weights would cost from that. How much over all, how much change? He managed quite well.

I think a budget of £20k is just alien to most children and for most so would be a 3 day holiday that cost anything like that much. In many cases that may be more than what their parents earn in a year.

But my kids weren't typical at that age - I would say we are going to c on holiday and the response was how many stars! They used to build Lego hotels for the dolls from their dolls house with en suite bathrooms and balconies ... privileged kids, should have just taken them camping

Sounds like quite a lot of work. My 10yo would probably lose focus, and would need a few prompts and prods. Also wouldn't know what "amenities" are but that's an easy fix.