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.

@CheetasOnFajitas yes sorry we are in the US.

Mine would have enjoyed that at ten.

@Minikievs

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.

Me too! He’s off to ‘middle school’ next year about your year 6-8 I guess. It really ramps up a lot and I worry for him. An extra difficulty is that we’re not from the US so we don’t get the school system. Every piece of work is graded, this piece is a major grade and the pressure is constant throughout the year. They’ve started now deducting percentage points for late work in preparation for moving up next year. But at the same time I’ve found with my older who is in last year of middle school that if they sit a test and it doesn’t pass muster they get to do a resit or resubmit work (but then have the grade capped at 70%, the passing grade). His maths teacher just sent a message this week saying the whole clAss failed a test and she was very disappointed, there would be a reteach and a retest. When I was at school in the olden days if you failed, you failed!

That assignment at that age would really piss me off. I'm really frustrated at tasks that require relatively young children to do extensive and unguided internet searching, which could very easily lead them to unsuitable content.

A better assignment would be for the teacher to pre-vet the website of a specific resort, checking that the information needed (menus, activities etc) was all available without them having to search elsewhere. Or to tell them to use a well-known, reputable online grocery store (Asda, Tesco etc) to plan a day's shopping for a family of five, and then work out cost per head per meal etc.

His maths teacher just sent a message this week saying the whole clAss failed a test and she was very disappointed

If the whole class failed then the teacher should be looking at their actions, not expressing disappointment in their students. An entire class failing shows the teaching wasn't adequate.

[quote HerRoyalNotness]@CheetasOnFajitas yes sorry we are in the US.[/quote]
Even more amazing that it’s an assignment about flying out of the US on holiday, so few Americans even have passports! Are they in an exclusive private school?!

“His maths teacher just sent a message this week saying the whole clAss failed a test and she was very disappointed, there would be a reteach and a retest”

Very disappointed if everyone failed it doesn’t sound like they’d covered the content very well!

Sorry, just seen you are in the US. Our children spent 3 years in elementary and middle school and I can relate to what you say about not 'getting' the system in the same way. And yes there was a big jump in expectation in sixth grade.

I’ve done a similar exercise with girl guides (aged 10-14). The 10 year olds did need a fair bit of guidance for the actual research and prices of things but could do the maths with the help of a calculator.

My ds is year 5, age 9 (one of the youngest in the year) and could do most of it. He'd probably ask me what amenities are though because he wouldn't have a clue.

Mine would struggle. So would my husband!

First question I'd be asking would be is it realistic for someone from the US to go on holiday to Europe and only be gone 3 days?

If you had a decent budget like that, wouldn't you at least go for a fortnight to make it worthwhile?

Although they did go to Paris for a short break in Home Alone, so maybe that is a normal sort of holiday for people in the US.

When I was 10 we had a similar task but it was to plan our own funeral (the costs, where we want to be buried, the music, the readings etc) My mum went apeshit when she found out, said it’s too morbid for a 10 year old to plan everything out. Lol

If mine was given the information yes, is he was expected to look for it then no.

I'm really surprised so many think this is easily doable for a 10yo child - are you all assuming that the teacher has provided lists of accommodation, flights and so on?

My 12yo would struggle with doing this from scratch. It's not the maths part, that would be easy, although currency conversion perhaps less so - it's understanding how and where to book a flight, hotel, restaurants, activities etc. He has never done that kind of thing and it's not like you can do it all on the same website. If I was going to look at those things I'd have to visit at least five different websites, and I've booked fantasy holidays before so I know what websites to look at, although TBH the hotel websites I know are pretty Euro-centric, I'm not sure they'd be as useful for a trip to Asia for example, because I've never been there.

Plus picking the exact food to order at the restaurant(s) for 3 meals a day? Where would you even start with that? Not all countries have easily accessible menus online and probably wouldn't list all the prices. Knowing DS1's current obsession, he'd plan his trip to Tokyo - do Tokyo restaurants have menus online in English with prices he can understand? I doubt it! So what do you do in that case, guess? I wouldn't know how much restaurants cost in Tokyo, nor what you can eat there, let alone a 10yo.

So many questions though. How many people is this for?

Does it include the cost of Coronavirus cancellation insurance? Maybe that's why the budget is so high.

But it would be difficult for any of us to do right now anyway, because I can't imagine that all the travel information websites are showing realistic pricing and availability.

Also unrelated to the difficulty of the task this sounds like a truly exhausting holiday :o

Three days, after a transatlantic flight, three restaurant meals and three activities per day! When do you have time to relax?

@NeonSparkle

When I was 10 we had a similar task but it was to plan our own funeral (the costs, where we want to be buried, the music, the readings etc) My mum went apeshit when she found out, said it’s too morbid for a 10 year old to plan everything out. Lol

DD would have done that a younger than 10 with no issues. DS couldn’t do it now at 17! (SEN).

The maths part yes , but I’d have to help with getting the figures in the first place.

@CheetasOnFajitas no, at state school. I read the assignment and he had the choice of 3. The one he chose was you won a 3 day vacation.

I asked my 13yo if he knew what amenities are just now, he didn’t so I said well ask Alexa and find out .

Alexa, what are amenities?
According to Wikipedia à manatee is ........

In Berlin I can recommend the Reikstag tour (cost 0) and a Berlin underground tour!
Good luck to your son with the assignment!

I would have thought that finding the flights, hotels and activities, staying on budget and even picking from online menus would be the easy part for an internet savvy, spreadsheet competent 10 YO.

The challenging part would be what you ended up with. Would you trust your 10 YO to pick a hotel that you like, that is suitably located so near to the amenities and restaurants, and would they also be to your taste? That's what I would be most concerned about and I'm not that fussy.

@NeonSparkle

When I was 10 we had a similar task but it was to plan our own funeral (the costs, where we want to be buried, the music, the readings etc) My mum went apeshit when she found out, said it’s too morbid for a 10 year old to plan everything out. Lol

That’s mind boggling!

I read the assignment and he had the choice of 3. The one he chose was you won a 3 day vacation.

That makes this project even more daft. If I've won a holiday surely it should all be planned our for me.

Mine could do the maths but he wouldn't have a clue where to start with researching. I'd have to be next to him the whole time.