Monday, July 27, 2009

Summer Bridge Activities Workbook



In our homes, summer is a time filled with swimming, playing outside and the occasional video game. And although we want our kids to enjoy their two months of free time, we still feel the need to reinforce the skills they learned in school with some type of academic workbook or worksheets. Like many parents, we usually find activities online and print off mountains of worksheets (that end up scattered around our homes) or go to our local bookstore to find something that looks appealing for our kids to do.

This summer, we were fortunate to receive summer learning workbooks from Summer Bridge Activities. These books are designed to reinforce writing, math, and language arts skills as well as preview the grade ahead. All the things we wanted to do with our kids without spending hundreds of dollars or hours in summer school! So when the books arrived, we were excited to try them out with our children ranging from 3-7 grades.

Now we must admit, that like many kids, our children were not thrilled to stop playing to sit down and do workbook pages, but once they got started they seemed to enjoy the work. The activities are fun and creative and presented in a visually appealing way.

There are three sections in the book (each begins with a motivational calendar)--the first two sections are review and the third is a preview. Each page is numbered by day and the activities become more challenging. Another great feature is a suggested reading list.

As parents, our favorite aspect is that these books provide a comprehensive overview of all subjects learned in the classroom--one book covers all subjects. It is a manageable way to keep learning alive without overwhelming your kids (or yourself!). We give it our two shopping bags seal of approval!



You can find Summer Bridge Activities workbooks at Barnes and Noble, Borders, Walden Books, and Carson-Dellosa Publishing. We are also giving away three Summer Bridge Activities workbooks (it is not too late to get a little review in this summer!). To enter our contest, please tell us what you do with your child(ren) to keep learning alive during the summer and let us know what grade your child will be going into this fall. We will randomly draw three names and announce the winners August 3rd. If you have problems posting a comment, please email us at blog.tina@yahoo.com.

4 comments:

  1. With both of us working full-time and the kids not being self-motivated at working on their workbooks, we are sending our 5th and 7th graders to a learning center for 3 hours a day where they work on math and language arts skills. They receive homework assignment daily which takes another hour or so in the afternoon to complete. Our 9th grader works on his SAT workbook VERY briefly each day on his own. He also goes to a private tutor to preview Algebra II for the coming school year. My quesion would be how to get the kids interested and enjoy the workbooks? I should check out Summer Bridge Activities workbooks one of these days. Who knows... it may save me some $$$.
    Julie

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  2. My oldest child, who will be entering the 3rd grade, went to summer school. Now that summer school has ended, both of my kids (my youngest will be entering Kinder) are doing workbooks (reading and math). Boy, do they "enjoy" the workbooks. NOT! They only have to do two pages from each workbook, but they way they complain you think I was having them complete the entire workbook in one day.

    I didn't check out the Summer Bridge workbooks when I picked up ours. I've heard good things about them from a family friend. Next year I'll have a look at them.

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  3. I always try and get my kids to do these workbooks but find it hard to get them interested. I'd love to try something that provides an overview of multiple subjects and is interesting for my kids--Karin

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  4. Sounds like something worth trying! We've done summer school programs and tutoring in years past but having something simple to use at home as a supplement would be great! Chris

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