Summer Solutions offers you an amazing chance to keep your child engaged in their learning all summer long.  They offer you workbooks that you use with your child for a few minutes each day that will help them retain their learning.  I was able to check out quite a few of their books and I wanted to share with you my thoughts on each one of them and the experiences that my children and I have had this summer.

I am excited for the new school year to see if they really retained more this summer than in previous years.  I have one child who has always retained even without summer work and one child who has struggled.

For Huxley Who Just Finished PreK

Huxley just finished up with 2 years at PreK.  I was actually quite surprised by how much he knew and all of the things that he could do within the Summer Solutions workbook.  He enjoyed the lessons and practiced learning many things including how to write which was helpful.  The lessons were definitely age appropriate and are something that I feel would make great worksheets throughout the beginning of the school year if extra work is needed as well.

For Althea Who Just Finished 1st Grade

With Althea some things were different.  In fact we picked out a few different workbooks so that we could work on different skills with her.

Level 1 Common Core Mathematics was something that she really excelled with.  I will admit that I was pretty surprised as I know that math is not her strongest subject.  She actually uses Simple Solutions (a classroom tool that is very similar to Summer Solutions) in her classroom so I think that this is what allowed her to do such a great job with the common core math problems.  I will admit that a parents guide would have been helpful with common core since it is something that I honestly do not know that much about.

The Level 1 Common Core English Grammar is something else that I have appreciated being able to use.  It has been nice to be able to see where my daughter struggles.  Most of the things that I have worked with her are that she needs to slow down and follow directions.  This is something that is going to be helpful overall in her ability to do work in school and bee successful throughout her education.  I am thankful that I chose Summer Solutions to help me this summer with all of our goals.

Since Althea really needs extra practice with math I love that I have had the Level 1 Mathematics workbook to work on with her as well.  We switch around between the different books so that she is never bored.  I did offer a reward for each workbook that the kids finish so I am sure that this is inspiring all of their additional summer work.

The Level 1 English Grammar and Writing Mechanics book was the one that I decided was not quite right for what she had learned.  We have used some of the lessons but since she was so confused on others, I took it as meaning that she was not being taught things the way that they were in this book.  We talked about things but I did not want to confuse her or cause more harm than good so I went ahead and allowed her to take time off from this one.

I have to admit that the Level 1 Reading Comprehension has been one of my favorite workbooks to use with Althea this summer.  It really has been able to help me pinpoint where she is not comprehending things and to be able to work with her on those skills.  This has allowed me to offer her unique guidance that she would not have had otherwise.  I am excited that she has also taken up letter writing and has a few pen pals that she has enjoyed sending letters and fun gifts to this summer.

The Level 1 workbooks all seem to have fallen in line with the things that Althea has been learning and she seemed up to speed on them all.

For Andrew Who Just Finished 6th Grade

When it comes to Andrew I have to admit that he was not very interested in summer learning.  He is very smart but there are definitely things that he could improve upon like his study skills.  So I decided to use this as a way to offer him an incentive to do well at something.  So I told him the other day that he had until the end of September and that I would offer a monetary reward for each of the workbooks that he had completed based upon the effort that I saw him put forward.  There were a few times before this offer was made that I saw a lot of quickly paced work that he did not seem that interested in completing.

Level 6 Common Core Mathematics caused me to have a lot of concern for the children in our school district until I realized that part of the issue was Andrew.  Andrew has not been taught things completely in common core so this was not the way that he was taught for all problems.  Before I realized this I was a little panicked about our schools since he is in all advanced placement classes and seemed to be getting a lot of answers wrong.  After working through the problems that he missed together it seemed like he really picked up and started doing better.

Since Andrew is really smart, he has never really had to study.  That’s right he is a lucky kid who has managed to make it through most of his schooling without putting in those extra hours of effort.  That being said,  I know how important studying is going to be as he gets older so I encouraged him to complete the Level 6 Study Skills workbook.  He is learning how to study with this one and that is something that makes me really happy.  I know that he is learning skills that he is going to need in high school and college.

Another area where I have seen Andrew struggle is with his grammar.  He writes really well and is super creative but he makes a ton of grammar mistakes when he is writing.  I really like this workbook for these issues and it seems that he is really picking up things from using it.  I hope that this helps him to improve his writing for his 7th grade year.

The Level 6 Problem Solving book is another one that seemed to be really great for Andrew.  This book allowed him to work on problems that he was used to solving and he really seemed to enjoy it.  In fact I think that this might have been his personal favorite this summer.  It seemed to be the one that he reached for when he was allowed to choose the workbooks that he was going to do by himself.

Level 6 Common Core English Grammar is the final workbook that Andrew had this summer.  This one was nice because it covered all of the additional English grammar stuff that was not covered in the other one.  I appreciate that is really learning how to do things better, including how to follow directions and read things thoroughly.

I will admit that there has been a bit of concern for the overall state of the education system where we live after watching Andrew not know some of the things in these workbooks while being in advanced classes.  This was a huge concern for me but is not something that I am overly worried about because I feel like the workbooks allowed him to catch up over the summer.

Final Thoughts — Summer Solutions Can Help You Bridge the Gap Between Your Child’s Learning Over the Summer

I believe with my whole heart that everyone should check out Summer Solutions for their children.  These workbooks are amazing and a great way to maintain that your children do not end up losing what they learned over the summer.  The whole purpose of these workbooks is to help your child maintain the things that they have learned.