Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School Summer Academics - how much to push???

Same here except that we are not done with the school year yet.

The kids will spend a few weeks in different camps. To my big surprise they want to maintain 2 of their private lessons over the summer and that's all. There won't be any teaching, any workbooks, any mommy driven activities and no piano. Yay! I am so done with teaching for a while I need a break.

The only thing I require is that they finish all their Powerspeak lessons as I don't want to pay for another year just because they didn't have enough time for the last few lessons.

I am sure they will learn lots of things on their own. It's pretty much impossible for them not to do so. I will happily take them to the library, help them with their experiments and take them to the museums, but I won't insist that they do anything school related.

Let the summer start

very little - but not nothing. I will ask that my sons do occaisional entries in a journal if they don't do it themselves. So far they are doing it anyways, so I don't expect to have to ask them. If I think they need a bit more I'll come up with a few tasks. It all depends on what they do on their own. We talk about needing both physical and mental excercise on a regular basis, but as long as they are doing some of both on a regular basis, I will leave them to be self-directed.

That being said, last summer I did have some workbooks for them which I asked them to work on a few times a week. It never took more than a few minutes, though, and there was a specific point of filling in some of the gaps in their knowlege.