Do you 'make' your kids do any school work in the summer hols?

[Curlewwoohoo]

Interested in perspectives as I mull over whether to bribe or threaten DD or leave her be! DD is heading into yr6. She had a solid school report. She's very reluctant to do any school type work at home and always has been. I am very twitchy about it, I would LOVE to spend time over the summer helping her with her spellings, maths, teaching her to type, supporting reading. Full disclosure that she's dyslexic so I'd like to pick up on particular things to help her. Any such suggestions do NOT go down well. I'm conflicted as I understand she needs a break, I think it's good for her to be outside or get bored, but I also don't want her to fall behind. Give it a couple of years tops and there's no way she will do what I think, so I've got a limited window!

We do, but my DC are generally not that resistant to it. Always keep up reading and music practice.

DD3 has school entrance exams next term, so we'll be doing some this summer with her - probably 30 minutes - 1 hour a day? She's also away for a week at scout camp and we're on holiday for a week, so that will only be for 4 weeks of the 6 anyway.

They have plenty of time to be bored/ creative/ go on screens/ go out and do all the other things they want to do on holiday. Or not want to do (I just made DS sew on his last scout badge and the huffing and puffing was something to behold!)

super stubborn dyslexic child struggling with some aspects to do the thing she dislikes but will be most useful to her come September...

There was often less resistance to computer based stuff - we did mathsfactor anyway - but did try Nessy and TTRS over some summers - but not sure about effects of them as we continued with our usual programs for reading spelling and writing.

It wasn't either or we did baking and new skills as well as well as library and mususm and time with family - though we had luxury of time with them - it's much harder if they're in childcare all day and come home tired and resistant.

I did at times wonder if I was just masking their issues but frankly coming to end of secondary now I think if we hadn't helped they'd have had it even harder. It did help DS at least set up good habits - when there was no work to find between GCSE and A-level he taught himself a programing language that made A-level easier for one subject. DD2 doing similar now.

Despite a teacher parent I never did school work during holidays (didn't expect my own children to either.) Didn't stop me, or sibling, or my own children, going to Russell Group Unis /Oxbridge and having good careers and lots of outside interests. Children flourish winding down , organising their own days etc etc. though of course in my childhood children were expected to be a lot more independent. You had breakfast , told Mum you were going out, she said don't be late for dinner at 1 and off you went exploring the neighbourhood with whoever you could knock up.(I'm talking about 8+). The risk with helicopter parents is that the children never learn to live their own lives.

My DD is the same as yours. About to go into year 6, academically able but doesn’t want to do anything unless it’s in her own terms (AuDHD). I’ve bought her a CPG summer holidays book and so far so good.

Nope, I’ve been known to give back holiday homework. I make it very clear that it’s MY time and we’re going to be doing other stuff. We did different learning, we baked, made ice cream, went crayfishing etc.

Yes, eldest has language processing issue so have been doing this for years. An hour of achievable work with a small reward like a soccer card every morning.
After that, all the downtime and creative, exploring physical fun stuff they could want. It makes them much more cheerful and purposeful actually.

What i find always remarkable is how many people say “ we never did extra work and had A star level and the read for pleasure anyway”

• a child that is able to do that well in a levels doesn’t need extra work
• you are the exception . most kids do not achieve these sort of results
• you got lucky. many kids need to put hard work in before they can read for pleasure

I have one of each - one with severe dyslexia, he started to read for pleasure in year 6, and up until then it was tons of hard work. He is otherwise able, but without the extra work he still wouldn’t be able to read properly And his work ethic is amazing now which will help him so much. And one who is effortlessly on the gifted and talented register. He doesn’t need the extra work, but he needs the work ethic ;)

No, i didn't.
I tried to and it became a huge problem.
I decided to pick my battles, ( despite my kids saying that I should have been on 'The worlds Strictest Parents' 😆 🤣)

Everything worked out fine!
Ds did go to Kumon though and we kept that up throughout the holidays.

Yes, every day in general (with the odd day when we don't have the time) but not much, maybe 20 - 30 minutes, that's nothing in a whole day and a good habit. It will benefit her a lot. I think a lot is lost in 6 weeks doing nothing, I am sure my daughter will forget a lot of the things she has learnt if she did nothing for that long

I've got a phonics work book for my reception going into year 1 boy. He's struggled a bit with reading so I don't want him to go a full 6 weeks without doing anything other than his bed time story. We're only on day 2 but he voluntarily asked to do extra last night and seemed to really enjoy being praised for doing well.

My kids are DS1 7 (going into year 3), DS2 nearly 6 (going into year 2) and DD 4 (going into reception).

DS1 loves reading anyway so he does that most days. DS2 finds it more challenging but he's recently started enjoying reading more as he sees DS1 loving it.

Apart from reading DS1 has maths and English work books that he can finish for September to get a reward at school, so he'll be doing that.

Won't really be doing anything else.

No, my children were never expected to do work in the holidays (possible exception was A level year - which they chose to do themselves).

We did take them out of school several times for holidays and in that instance would cover some work. We weren't living in the UK at the time, so term time holidays were fine.

Nothing formal. I make them read a small amount before bed and that’s it. My eldest will do things like Simply Piano and crafts. My youngest will
play football, play with toys or play Roblox. We do try and go out every day to do something (climbing, swimming or ninja warrior as we have passes). I’ll sneak in a few games that keep the brain ticking over but won’t make them sit down and do work.

I haven't usually but they are both behind with something specific (different things) and are having a tutor come in once a week over holidays to try and catch up a bit, especially for DC1 who is going to secondary and has SEND.

We do usually do loads of trips, museums, exercise and reading anyway though. They are having a week's holiday and one has an art summer school as well.

No I don’t. I’d have optimistically tried to when kids were younger. I take them to a bookshop and buy a book to go on holiday with, that’s it.

No I never did. Summer holidays are for relaxing and having down time. We would pop into the library and do the summer reading challenges (sometimes) but other than that I just let them enjoy their freedom. Fwiw DD got a 1st at uni and she and DS are both professional high earners - from normal comp schools - and live happy lives with partners. Kids don’t need to be constantly academically pushed to be successful.

I did not encourage my DCs to do schoolwork in the holidays. There’s so many other valuable ‘learning experiences’ they can have. Eg cookery, swimming, museum trips, playing with friends, reading for fun, holidays, visiting grandparents, gardening, building dens, riding bicycles etc etc etc

DC1 got a 1st from Imperial.

DC2 will probably get a 1st .

I used to strongly encourage them to a/ complete the holiday scrapbook they were supposed to do for school and b/ do the library reading challenge. They usually dragged their way through both of those things, with diminishing enthusiasm as they got older. Those scrapbooks are lovely to look back on now.

Mine are younger but we dont approach it as school work. We have been to the library and joined summer reading challenge, so read together. We are also making a scrapbook of our summer hols as a project. We are also going out visiting places

I dont think the schools of today are the same as those that graduate age kids went to. Far more SEND, EAL, ipad kids etc to stretch teacher attention. We absolutely will be making sure they've consolidated their learning for the year, apart from reading books mines little enough to not know what we're doing - dice games, phonics splat etc

My suggestions would be:

Read to her every day.
Get her to read to you or to herself a little every day - take it in turns to read perhaps. Go to the library - would she do the reading challenge?
Get her doing the BBC touch typing course, little bit each day.

I remember making mine do the touch typing course at primary as he is dyspraxic. I have no regrets as it was so useful to him.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/z3c6tfr#zn9s3qt

I read to DC every morning Eg Wind in the Willows and we had a quiet Half hour after lunch when they had to read to themselves. Visiting friends brought a book too.
they kept a diary / scrapbook of the holidays and had to write in it every day. At least a couple of sentences.
maths was when we did cooking or shopping.
we visited museums and art galleries.
they had lots of exercise in the garden, on bikes and swimming.
you can’t let them vegetate for 6 weeks.
this was a long time ago. Nowadays I would definitely be using workbooks. DD said of lockdown that had they been school age she knows I would have been setting them extra work!

No I would not make them do school work. But if I worried they might need practice with something then I might try to find a fun way to work either directly on that skill or on the underlying skill in order to give them a stronger foundation for the next year?

e.g. DS2 is at the point he can read and write fairly confidently but could do with some practice forming sentences. I've got an old Fridge Poetry set out for him to mess around with.

DS3 is at speech therapy because he struggles to differentiate between s/t and f/b so we are doing a lot of games like I-Spy, find X amount of things starting with Y letter, etc, to try and help him differentiate between different letter sounds.

When my oldest was in primary school I was home with her in the summer so we did our own summer school - bit of maths, bit of English, history topic each week (and horrible histories while we ate our lunch). It really helped her get a strong basis (and on the history side, teach her things she wasn't going to learn in school in our country) and she enjoyed it. We added in fun things like cooking something from the historical time period of the week. The last year we did it we did detective school instead, watching an episode of Poirot each day and trying to figure out who did it before he did

Now my youngest has started primary school but I'm working full time so I leave him some work to do (about 10 minutes worth) and he nearly always doesn't do it - very different children!