What to do over the summer!?

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Manana
Posts: 710
Joined: Wed Mar 09, 2011 3:22 pm

What to do over the summer!?

Post by Manana »

DS has had a couple of mocks recently and scored well-enough to pass the 11+ comfortably. However, like everyone else, we now have six weeks away from school and I want to keep him ticking over but still enabling him to relax/wind down/have fun.

Is 45 minutes of my time each holiday morning too much to ask!? What are your plans if you have a DC sitting the test in September?
Okanagan
Posts: 1706
Joined: Mon Aug 22, 2011 9:20 pm
Location: Warwickshire

Re: What to do over the summer!?

Post by Okanagan »

Our exam is only 4 days into the new term, so we're going to have to carry on doing something over the summer.

I'm actually taking ds away towards the end of summer to a couple of sports camps - so that we'll have several evenings on our own in a travelodge with no friends, Wii, sattelite tv or little brother to distract him so we can do some practice at doing two papers with a 15 minute gap in the middle. Distraction free time isn't a luxury we have much at home so most of his practice has been on various online sites. As a result getting used to just using pen and paper and doing longer sessions to build concentration are our focus now.

I'm actually fairly happy with where he is on conventional VR, NVR and maths, so we're concentrating more now on vocabulary (things like freerice) and any non conventional exercises I can come up with (we get the Durham CEM papers here so almost anything could be on the papers - it's not very predicatable). Right now we've been doing some spatial reasoning stuff, things like the time-speed-distance questions and compass bearings they use for the RAF Officer exams (http://www.speeddistancetime.info/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;) and daily cloze exercises which I'm producing for him (length very variable depending upon how much time I have!).

I'm not expecting him to do 45 minutes every day though (but probably more than that on average!) - so we'll mix up days of only 10-15 minutes and even some days off with days when he might do a couple of hours.

Have promised a proper long summer holiday next year though!
menagerie
Posts: 577
Joined: Thu May 26, 2011 9:37 pm

Re: What to do over the summer!?

Post by menagerie »

I don't think 45 mins a day is too much to ask at all.

I've bought a stack on 10 mins tests, so we're doing those each day to tick over, plus some writing.

If you need to, you can always remind your DC that it's only for this one summer. Our DC aren't doing us a favour by working towards their 11+, they're doing themselves a favour. I think if you run through the plans for each day, slipping 11+ work in early on, followed by two or three things to enjoy, then they'll barely notice.
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