Summer Schooling at Home

Is your child coming out of a difficult school year? Were there more failures than successes? Are you fearful that next year may be even worse? If this is the case, you need to take action. I propose summer schooling at home. Summer schooling at home gives the parent the ability to focus on the child's academic issues. It allows the child to get a head start on subjects they may be apprehensive about. It teaches the student to take charge of his or her own education, setting them on a successful course for the coming school year.

When my child was in kindergarten, I received weekly notes that were anything but positive. Either she wasn't paying attention in class or she was struggling with reading and math. I knew that if she was struggling at such a young grade that it would only get worse without intervention. Knowing several homeschoolers, I looked to what they were doing as an example of how I could use the summer to help improve her academics. We used an online learn-to-read program and played math games all summer. By fall, she was reading on her own and math was never a problem again. We were so successful, in fact, that we eventually decided to homeschool full time!

I also had a middle school nephew who was failing math and put in remedial classes. I had the opportunity to spend a couple of weeks with him over Christmas and discovered that he had never really learned to multiply. Because of that, he never really grasped middle school math. I taught him some multiplication tips and tricks, and helped him get up to speed quickly. By the end of the school year, he received a "most improved" award.

With that said, you can see how taking charge of a child's education and working with them at home can get them up to speed in school. There are several options you can choose for materials that can help get them ahead. If you like workbooks, there is the Summer Bridge series that reviews the last school year then moves into the first few months of the next grade level. This will help them hit the ground running.

If the child's problem is in one particular area, such as math or reading, I recommend educational DVDs to allow them to focus on that subject all summer. For younger children, there is the Reader Rabbit series. For older students, I like Jump Start Adventures and Learning Odyssey. High schools students can use the Math Tutor DVD series.

Another program I like for summer school at home education is Time4Learning. Students from pre-K through eighth grade can review or get ahead in one subject or several subjects through enjoyable, interactive, online lessons. This subscription based curriculum is used largely by homeschoolers during the school year, but it is very easy to accelerate through a few units during the summer, especially when you are reviewing work from the year just completed. Another program I like is Time4Writing. It allows the student to receive feedback from a writing teacher to help improve their writing skills, which will improve their quality of work for the next school year.