Summer Enrichment

As the school year closes, students can look forward to the leisure of the summer with great relish. Of course, they also have to begin thinking about the academic year to come. A new year, even in elementary school, means harder subjects, more hours devoted to homework, and more tests and projects.

Now, we don’t mean to rain on anyone’s parade. Far from it. We were children once, and we remember what summer vacation meant, but we also want to make the transition from summer to autumn easier. Heading into a new school year with a brain that has gone soft from inactivity is, needless to say, not a good idea. Keeping the mind sharp is like any form of exercise — it needn’t be difficult or all-consuming, but it has to be done, and the benefits of it are easily sensed. Such is the attitude we take in our elementary school summer enrichment program.

The great luxury of a summer program is that students are free to fashion it any way they want to. If a student just wants to brush up on long division for an hour a week, he or she can. If it’s a book report, fine. Or if, perhaps, the student is heading into the sixth grade and wants to prepare more rigorously for what middle school will demand, we can help. Middle school is certain to be less of a shock if students enter it with basic writing skills and study habits already in place. Many of our incoming sixth-graders choose this latter option and spend some of the summer in a kind of individual writing workshop to make their first middle school essays and research assignments far easier. Whatever a student needs or wants, though, we can provide in our elementary school summer enrichment to make the beginning of the next school year settle in more smoothly.