Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School Ideas to prevent summer brain

DD8.5 is having a great summer thus far. School has always been a challenge for her and she is enjoying the time off. She has ADHD and ? dyslexia/dysgraphia (further assessment in September). Part of her school issues stem from her refusal to do work that a)she thinks she can't do, b) is too 'boring', or c)involves too much writing. Her new school wants to help her by coming up with creative ideas to modify her school work for next year. Trying to spurn some creative juices, I bought a workbook of activities aimed at bridging her current grade to her new grade. They are definitely below her level, but are short (4-5 per page) and interesting. Each day she has to do one sheet and if she doesn't like the activity, then she and I brainstorm to come up with a way to make the activity more interesting or involve less writing. We're talking 10 minutes per day.

It is going so-so. She really could not care less. Even when I try to encourage her to help her help herself, she is unmotivated. I offered to get harder workborks and she completely balked at that. Also, she is only vaguely interested in her summer reading program at the library (and only because she discovered that magazines count). This was her idea because she could earn prizes.

Looking for any fun ideas you may have to help keep her motivated and/or for us to learn what engages her or how to help her succeed. Working with her is like trying to herd cats. She freaks out at the prospect of doing any 'work'. I don't want to bang my head against the wall anymore. I just want to find out how to help her make her school assignments a little more bearable.

We bought the summer bridge gifted workbook second grade for dd7. She also has a brainquest 2nd grade workbook that I have given stuff to both kids.We have a gifted math workbook grade 1 for ds5 (entering kinder). The workbook for dd seems very easy in some areas and challenging in a few others. The math book for ds5 is just about right for him only because he is lacking the reading skills needed for the word problems. He is just now becoming confident enough to read them on his own.

We have a chalkboard easel we have been using. The math challenges have been quite interesting as I think ds has just about caught up with dd (who will also be math accelerated in the coming year). The 2 of them play off of each other and it has become a competition.

I guess what I am saying.. is make it fun. What is she interested in? As an example, we have been using baking to review fractions.

not sure if this is what you were looking for ...
hth

Sheila

Yes, this is the stuff I am looking for. Funny you mentioned baking, because this was one of the first tip offs for us that she may be gifted. She was doubling fractions in recipes at 4. I just want to her to be able to turn an unpleasant/undo-able(for her) assignment into a Kathleen-friendly one. Example: today her worksheet asked her to re-write a paragraph in cursive and add in the missing capital letters and punctuation. She FREAKED. My suggestion that she type it was met with scorn. It took two temper tantrums and an hour to calm down before we came up with the idea that she could just pencil in the changes to the capitals and punctuation on the existing text and forgo the re-writing (she LOVED this idea). Ideally, her teacher would come up with these ideas but we are learning that this is seldom the case. They seem to be very receptive to our ideas, but put little of their own time into coming up with interesting modifications. I am hoping that by working with her this summer, I can put together some suggestions that have worked well and pass them on to her new teacher. We are getting really tired of starting from scrath every year.

Our principal suggested something like this for ds5


maps... is there something your daughter REALLY likes? Lets say she is a musical kind of kid.. have her draw a piano and map out different composers. Use different colors to reflect the type of music

ooo and for fractions and decimals.. ds came up with using money.. a quarter is 1/4 of a dollar, a dime is 1/10 and so on. How a 5yr old mind works

Here are a couple of other fun ways to learn about fractions in a hands-on way:

http://teachingmybabytoread.blog.com/2011/06/10/peanut-buttering-reducing-fractions/

http://teachingmybabytoread.blog.com/2011/06/07/outside-fraction-lesson/