Summer School

My son is doing school every week day this summer.  Well maybe not everyday, if we have something planned for the morning we'll skip it, and for other reasons. Want to know the main reason he is doing school work all summer, it has nothing to do with the statistic that he will lose 30% of his knowledge over the summer.  It has to do with he drives me crazy when his life is unstructured.  He cries, and whines, and so he is DOING school. He is too precocious for our own good.  This is what I came up with a school jar. 

 Each activity has a clothes pin and he picks two a day.  Once he has done all his clothespins, he puts them back and and we start over.  I thought this would be effective because some of the school activities he does not like, but those are the ones he actually needs to work on over the summer.  This way it is not me assigning it, it is him picking it. If he wants to do more than two work activities a day then, he can earn his quarter to put towards buying new books. His dad decided he could do math worksheet to earn new books.  Yes, we have a reader on our hands, but he also likes to do math too.  Each worksheet is worth a quarter.

I also made a Learning Jar for my daughter.  I don't care if she uses it but I didn't want her to feel left out.  It has more than coloring, things I want her to learn over the summer like counting to 10, recognizing numbers, writing N, learning phonic sounds of some letters.  My husband wondered why I didn't have learn ABCs on one, I said I don't want her to learn the names of the letters until she knows the noises they make.   When I read alphabet books with my toddlers I don't say A is for, I say, ahh (the sound of A) is for. But her jar has fun things too, like stickers, cover the page in stickers, she is only 3.
Would you like to know what my son has to do this summer?

• Writing Page (Describe ___ use at least 4 sentences) He does not like this assignment, hopefully him picking the topics will help.
• Reading what he chooses, and then telling me the summary, and main idea
• Bridge Book (a workbook we bought from school)
• Learn to Tie Shoes
• Debate  my husband came up with this (this is he gives me 5 pro or cons of the a topic, for example why is it good to play outside) (We are working on explanation and comprehension this summer.  We know he is comprehending but his teacher will want evidence he is understanding, so he needs to work on explaining.)
• Dictionary my husband came up with this.  He has a elementary school dictionary, he will have to look up a word, write how to spell the word, and what the word means.  Hopefully as the summer goes on he can summarize the definition instead of copy.
• Math worksheets
• Science, I haven't really planned what this means yet, but he loves science
• Maybe I should add, practice riding a bike.  Especially the two wheeler not the training wheel one.  Then again any pedaling motion he does, I am relieved about. No scooter allowed.