How to motivate your child to study in the summer?

Studying in the summer - a time advantage of as much as 3 months

The period between handing in textbooks and buying school supplies for the new school year (in other words, summer) always seems to be a time when schoolchildren can do nothing much, play, go for walks, go for a drive or even go on vacation.

But always after summer comes fall, which again returns the child to the routine of homework, preparations, electives and class hours. And most often it happens with a fight. Tasted freedom and a lot of free time schoolboy resists to study again.

But why? After all, the school gave him a lot of pleasant emotions, experiences, joy for the report evaluated by an A and pride in winning a soccer game over a parallel class. Or even butterflies in his stomach because of a high school girl who held her gaze on him for half a second longer than usual. Doesn't he want to see her again? Let's get to the bottom of it in this article.

How is summer for an average school student?

Children's apathy appears from the inability to do what they like

Often summer vacations follow the following scenario:

1. А student who has had enough, spoiled sleep patterns and forgotten half of the school program in the first month of summer vacation falls out of the usual rhythm of life.
2. Already in the middle of summer to walk, play and ride becomes not so interesting, and more and more often the child lies aimlessly at home, spitting at the ceiling and occasionally going to the store at the request of parents.
   
3. By the third month he begins to slowly read the list of literature for the summer, and at the end of August, already in a new uniform, with a new pencil case and backpack, he realizes that the summer's over again, bringing no satisfaction.
   

And here he is, perhaps even crying, standing on the morning of September 1 in the corridor of his apartment and with all his appearance says that school for him - hard labor. Of course, this is not always the case, but it is a very common pattern.

How does the school influence the situation?

The school curriculum does not work with the uniqueness of the child, but ignores it

The average school program is in principle rather weakly aimed at teaching a child something.

The principle of "one topic a month - a test - you can forget forever" does not dispose of knowledge in the long-term memory.

The system itself literally accustoms the child to get rid of unnecessary knowledge in a month or two, because new information, which is poured into him 6-7 lessons a day, requires free space. And by June this principle of “memorized-sold-forget” is scaled up to the size of the year, and in September in the head of the schoolboy remains only what by pure chance was able to fix in long-term memory. And it is hard for a child to return to it time after time.

Impact on the student

Patience and labor will be erased into powder

It's hard to believe, but in fact any human being is very sensitive to the value of his labor. If a person knows that he is engaged in something that has no real value or useful meaning, it depresses him.

The existentialist philosopher Albert Camus, in his book The Myth of Sisyphus, called this absurd. In the book, Sisyphus was condemned by the gods to lift a huge boulder to the top of a mountain, from where the block invariably rolled down. "There is no punishment more terrible than useless and hopeless labor."

The office worker, typing the same bureaucratic formalities day in and day out, knowing that they are only necessary for ticking boxes, suffers inwardly from the realization of the meaninglessness of his labor.

For a child, studying at school is a Sisyphean labor. Everyone around him tells him how important it is to study well, but, as a rule, he does not understand why he should learn something that will be asked only once, and then he will forget it forever. Why would he, after a relatively meaningful summer where he was doing something he wanted to do himself, go back to something that he doesn't enjoy, that he doesn't see much point in, and on which he wastes a weighty amount of energy and time? He doesn't understand it.

So how can you motivate your child to study in the summer?

Useful summer is 25% of a child's school years, they can be used

As it has already appeared, there are two sources of problems:

1. during summer vacations the child is lost in boundless idleness, and such changes in the rhythm of life have a negative impact on the performance of studies (and also inculcate the harmful habit of instability);
2. because of the teaching system, the child sees no point in studying in principle, and even less so during vacations.
   

They have only one solution - it is to organize employment during non-school hours. It is important that employment should not be a Sisyphean labor for the child. Ideally, you should try to instill in the child a desire for self-education. Show that learning does not have to be boring and useless, but can be fun. Below we will discuss concrete steps for organizing summer schooling.

Step 1: Create a Positive Environment

The atmosphere is not conducive

You should approach the start of summer learning with ease, understanding and comfort. The child must understand that what he will be doing has little in common with what he is used to doing at school.

Also, it is necessary to organize both a comfortable and cozy workplace for studying, and a pleasant, friendly atmosphere for studying. The training itself should not involve extreme loads, only measured training at a comfortable pace. It will be a success to organize study for 2-3 hours a day, divided into several quick and entertaining sessions.

Step 2: Setting Goals

Correct goal setting is the most important skill that will lead to success.

For productive learning it is necessary to set goals for the whole summer period:

• these can be preparations for the new school year,
• immersion in new disciplines and areas, languages,
  
• in-depth study of a particular subject,
  
• improving specific skills, or simply self-development in areas of interest to the child.
  

Together with your child, identify the areas in which he or she will be learning and mark out sub-goals, necessary actions and principles.

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Step 3: Variety in Training

A fun method increases your chances of learning success

It is also important to use a variety of teaching methods to maintain interest in learning.

Playful, creative, individual or group, theoretical or practical, online and offline - varying the methods of delivery has a positive effect on the associative memory, which directly supports the assimilation of information.

Of course, it is not always possible to organize a whole adventure, where one day is an active outdoor game and the next a thematic trip to a country to communicate with native speakers, but nevertheless, the use of even two or three different teaching methods will have a very noticeable effect for most children.

Step 4: Individual approach

Training taking into account the individual abilities of the student is the most effective

To organize productive learning, it is necessary to take into account the individual abilities, predispositions, desires and interests of the student. The choice of tasks, forms of teaching, materials and learning dynamics should be made taking into account the characteristics of the child - this is necessary so that the child does not have doubts and self-doubt.

At school, all children are in different conditions in terms of individual data, but everyone performs the same tasks, and often this leads either to the fact that the child is ahead of the rest in development and is bored, or, worse, does not catch up with his peers, feeling humiliated and, to put it mildly, not like everyone else. It is necessary to show the child that at home he has no one to compete with but himself.

Step 5: Encouragement and Praise

The child deserves to know that he is making progress.

Throughout the summer learning process, it is important to reaffirm the value and importance of the efforts and successes a child makes.

The parent remains an important source of identity for the child into adulthood. It is parental support, positive evaluation and praise that is taken closest to the heart.

If a child feels that his parents are proud of him when he develops in what he himself is interested in, this forms the life value of self-development. That is, he will realize that to develop in areas of interest to him - cool, and will not strive to develop in everything indiscriminately, which is often destructive.

Thanks to this, the feeling of "good job" will appear when the child will achieve success in his life without the participation of parents. Also, it will help in the formation of positive self-esteem (which is extremely important in adolescence) and will develop a fundamental desire for development.

Step 6*: Collaborative Learning

Maximum involvement in the child’s learning - participation in the process

This is not a mandatory step, but it is quite effective. If possible, you should try it. By spending time with the child and learning new things together, parents are engaged in interesting leisure activities and increase family cohesion.

❝ And also save on tutors. But that's just for the record.

By learning nearby, you can control the process and monitor the assimilation of material, in time to prompt and support your child on the path of summer learning. The child will feel that he/she is really important and needed, and parents will be distracted from the daily routine, immersed in something new and strengthen family relationships.

The importance of summer learning

Summer is a time of fun, relaxation and self-development

Summer education provides a number of undeniable advantages: it solves two problems of studying at school, helps to maintain and improve study skills, avoid the loss of previously studied material, expand your knowledge in any areas that you can choose independently, maintain the mode and pace of learning, and generally develop useful desire for self-development.

At the same time, having no objective disadvantages, summer training does not require huge material or time expenditures, so it can be recommended to everyone. After all, every child is subject to a pace of development at a young age, and summer learning is an excellent tool to increase it.