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.

This is what school and home education is all about; teaching children about the world, teaching them new skills, encouraging them to think and discuss.

Whilst also trying to do your 9 to 5 job and help other children with their work as well. Fair enough if you have decided to home school your child rather than send them to school but that is not the situation most of us find ourselves in.

2bazookas, no, I don't think we are talking about home education at all. To me, home education is when a parent commits to taking responsibility for a child's education and ensures they have the time and resources to support it properly.

I can't speak for the OP, but what I am doing now is nothing like home education. I am trying to do my best to help my children engage with their school education from home, while both me and my DH try to WFH full time. Totally different, and no I simply do not have the time to 'supervise the googling' of this kind of assignment.

wow $20k won't promote money management and budgeting
I'd have thought it was a fairly fun exercise for a child of ten to have a stab at.
Amenities - how much did he allocate to propping up the hotel bar

Who'd be a teacher during covid.

Now every lesson they plan is up for critiquing by parents. Great.
I now feel like leaving a crate of wine at the door of my nearest school.

@saraclara

Who'd be a teacher during covid.

Now every lesson they plan is up for critiquing by parents. Great.
I now feel like leaving a crate of wine at the door of my nearest school.

The teachers are doing a good job as far as they can. I wouldn't have their job for anything!

The question posed by the op is fine, even if it does mean an adult will have to guide the child a bit. It's better than just having questions and answers, and tick boxes, takes a little bit of imagination and ingenuity. My son would have loved it.

@BabyofMine

I don’t know if it’s reasonable, but I think it’s a pretty fucking insensitive assignment when children will likely have no holiday to plan for a very long time.

At least at the moment none of the class can go. Much better than when some families can't afford holidays and hearing other children talk about where they will be going in the summer / went last summer.

They'd probably be bored by the end! We're cheapskates, so they'd have to work really hard to "spend" all that money!

My 9 year old DS could do that but you would get a list rather than paragraphs as he is good with IT and Maths and awful at English. So if it doesn't specify a number of sentences or paragraphs you get the minimum number of words required to answer the question. You'd also get maps and photos and the text would probably be bright yellow.

Is this year 5 homework? I think the research involved in this is too much for a 10 year old. It's the kind of homework that an adult would have to help with, purely to sift through all the info. The homework is doable, but it's just too time consuming.
I am not sure about the these people who claim their children would have no problem with this. I've worked with a lot of children this age and I would say the majority would struggle.

[quote HerRoyalNotness]@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 ........[/quote]
Brilliant! Does American Alexa understand British English? Because of course British people say “AmEEnities” and Americans “AmEnities”.

I’m a TA and that is a standard year 5/6 activity. It’s easier than it seems with the internet at your fingertips.

How are airline search sites at the minute? I thought most flights etc are cancelled. Just to make it a bit harder.

Ah of course. Because there are no vulnerable kids in the UK living in poverty.

Poor children can have aspirations.

I'm a TA and that is a standard year 5/6 activity. It’s easier than it seems with the internet at your fingertips.

With guidance and support maybe.

Most 10 year olds don’t have the internet at their fingertips. They will have specially selected, monitored child friendly websites.

We live in quite a naice area. Most children in my DCs classes have a foreign holiday or 2 (or more) a year, in a normal year, We mainly do a week in a caravan in the uk, or occassionally caravan or camping in France.(although obviously that is a lot luckier than children who don't go on holiday at all) Both of them really enjoyed the activity when they did it in year 5. To them it was a fantasy project similar to the ones where you design your own theme park

I remember ds2 did something similar in yr5 but they weren't given a budget. I showed him how to find flights online and he did a trip to Morocco as his friend had been to Morocco.
I can't remember the exact total he came to but it was very expensive, alot more than 20k as I remember the teacher commenting on it.
I agree he needed alot of help with the little things like meals and what to do once he was there.

@sashh

Ah of course. Because there are no vulnerable kids in the UK living in poverty.

Poor children can have aspirations.

Aspirations absolutely.

This is not about aspirations. It’s about a project that some children will have absolutely no knowledge, experience or clue about. It’s just such a strange ‘project’.

Perhaps the scenario could be ‘You need to get to the food bank across town. It’s only open from 10am til 1pm.
Work out your travel route on public transport, work out how much you and your mum can carry back home again and work out how much gas you’ll need to cook the food you collect and how much that costs’

Yes, in fact my 10 year old did something very similar in December but they were asked to do organise a huge Christmas party (venue, decor, canapes, drinks, transport etc). She did it fine. My son also had to do this in Yr6, with a learning partner, a couple of years ago, and he and his learning partner somehow managed to actually book some stuff without meaning to and the TA had to contact the venue etc and let them know it was an academic exercise.

Doublefaced: It’s about a project that some children will have absolutely no knowledge, experience or clue about.
........
Isn't learning all about finding things out?

@BertieBotts

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?

But that's an adult's response! Don't you remember that 10 year olds think they have boundless energy and can keep going like a Duracell bunny? When we suggested to our grandchildren at that age that a week of whole days in Disney, 8am to 10 pm, would be too much they scoffed, by day 2 they were happy to return to the villa for lunch and go back later!