JUMPSTART FOURTH GRADE SCARY WINDOWS
Instead of looking down at their workbooks on a long road trip, my kids looked out their windows at the new landscape they had never seen before. Maybe taking the break is actually the best thing to do after all. And it’s really amazing how the fresh break of summer-and all the good stuff that summer brings-may even feed their brains with the vital juice to make them work that much harder during the school year. Apparently, our kids’ brains don’t deteriorate all that much over a few months. What I am trying to say is that if you find yourself at the end of the summer, and those workbooks have only five pages done…your kid just might be all right too.ĭon’t sweat it, moms. And I certainly understand the need to address those children with learning difficulties, and I realize every child is completely different in academics and each has varying needs. Now, I’m not trying to encourage you to blow off whatever educational intentions you may have for your kids. They dove right in and never struggled to keep up with the onslaught of material poured out on them each year. After that first year of dreading the idea of my kids suffering because of my own effortless slacking, I realized that they did just fine. My kids did great in school! Every year they would jump back onto the academic horse and gallop off into the sunset of great grades and conscious efforts. It disintegrated, much like the intellectual minds of my children each and every summer since. I vaguely recall those panicked moments of “Crap, we need to get on those workbooks!” But as with so many seasons of motherhood, I can’t quite place where I began the slipping surrender of this laborious goal. It could have happened.īut what I learned through this drop in academic investment came just as elusively as how I dropped it all in the first place. Perhaps it was the long days at the pool, or the day camps that exhausted them to the point of falling asleep mere minutes after returning home. I wonder how or why my incessant need to continue their mind-work fizzled. My daughter is in seventh grade now, and I haven’t bought another book since. I believe that was the beginning of the end. There were four pages completed.Ĭlearly, we were off to a good start, but somehow, the significance of it all tapered off rather abruptly that year…and I can’t for the life of me remember how or why. I remember the last time I bought those workbooks, as I recently found my daughter’s fourth grade review workbook under piles of junk in her room. Until somehow, this educational mission began to diminish in its importance. My kids were going to stay fresh and educated all summer long, and that’s how every summer began and ended. I always worried they would forget it all, and then start the new school year off with the ruins of a deteriorated brain. I was hell-bent on keeping all that information they digested during the school year tucked neatly in their little brains. My kids were expected to do at least five pages a day, and the enticing rewards would motivate them to ensure they would have the glorious, hard-earned day trip we planned that year.
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