Give Your Child An Academic Advantage With School Zone’s Summer Scholar!
Written: Jun 21 '04 (Updated Nov 20 '04)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Color pages, fun activities, inexpensive, part of a great series.
Cons: None!
The Bottom Line: Want to give your child an academic edge? Looking for some fun summer activities? School Zone’s Summer Scholar is a great series to invest in!
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| Freak369's Full Review: Jere M Kupekcy - Summer Scholar: Grade 2 Books |
One of the greatest advantages of home schooling a child is that you have an open schedule, basically creating a tailored academic schedule that best suits your childs needs. When I made the decision to home school my boys I did so knowing that would be a full time job and that summer vacation would be something that would include education and entertainment. Since we don’t really take a three month break there’s no problem when we take a few weeks off here there. Personally I think that the three month summer break between grades hurts most kids because they lose some of the basics that they were taught. When I came across the School Zone Summer Scholar series I was excited that there were fun activities, educational planners and things that all of the boys could do together but at the same time there were a lot of things that the books were lacking. For the most part they are a great resource for kids to have around and for parents to use to ensure that what they learned the previous year will be retained through the summer months. The Summer Scholar series takes the basics of what most educational curriculums define as standard teachings and put them into a fun and colorful format.
School Zone Summer Scholar Grade Two
This colorful and entertaining book is something that will capture your childs attention, enrich their learning and allow them to use things that they’ve previously learned fresh until the new school year starts. With almost every subject covered in the workbook, it is a great way for traditional and home schooling parents to give their children an edge during the summer months without having the child feel like he or she is still in school. While this is suggested for children from the ages for four through eight, it’s best to leaf through it to see if it is appropriate learning material for your child since each has their own unique learning curve. These are available in several different age groups / grade levels so if this one doesn’t seem the best for your child, there are others to choose from.
Some educational experts say that bridging the gap between school years is one of the most crucial elements in having children retain what they have learned, I agree to a certain point. If you are constantly bombarding your child with boring and stuffy material eventually they’ll start to loath “homework” and it will be an uphill battle to get them motivated to learn. School Zone takes the basics of standard grade two material and combines them with some of the elements of grade three to help prepare a child for their next level of education while keeping what they’ve already fresh in their minds. The way they do this successfully is to take summer oriented activities and put an educational twist on them; a great example of this is the way they incorporate factions to everyday summer events like the colors on a beach towel or determining the greatest number of a certain color of beads on a bracelet. While these may seem like trivial little things to adults, these are things that help prepare kids for their next level of education. But the beauty of it is this – since it’s presented in an extremely fun format kids don’t feel like they are still in school.
The 64 page workbook comes with a color answer key in the back of the book, individual “Activities To Share” sections for each subject [math, science, language arts, social studies] as well as a great table of contests in the front of the book. You might wonder why I even mention this – it’s divided into the four main subjects so you don’t have to hunt through the book to find a specific activity for a certain subject. Looking for something science related that deals with the different seasons? One glance at the table of contents shows you what’s available which eliminates having to flip around looking for a specific exercise. Moreover, the entire book is presented in a way that it flows from one exercise to another, often times keeping the theme going by overlapping it from subject to subject.
Math is the subject that seems to dominate this workbook with social studies having the least amount of coverage – important things to know if you are looking to boost a certain subject. Math covers the basics such as calendars and seasons, beginning fractions, division, how to read a thermometer, finding the largest sum and some pretty fun games. Language arts has the largest number of games with word searches, fill in the blanks and crossword puzzles. You child will also get some exercises with capital letters, word order, compound words and basic sentence structure. Science is more of a hands on section with fun and educational experiments that can be done with common household items. There are also more experiments that can be done in all the subjects in the "Activities To Share” section in the back of the book. This is a great book for kids to use on their own or with the help of a parent, when my boys used this one they had hours of fun with the activities as well as the experiments and I consider this a must have workbook for any parent that wants to make learning fun!
The Bottom Line
Each of the books in the series have a company’s sections that can be used to further enhance your child’s summer educational schedule. The recommended reading section offers you various titles that you can read with your child or they can read alone, Back to the east to share provides you with quality games and stories that you can use to teach your child various topics and subjects regarding writing, reading and building a strong vocabulary base. At the end of each book there is a color answer key that can be removed if you think your child may peek at the answers. The pages are not perforated so you will have to remove them carefully so you don’t rip them. You will also find a list of learning materials that can be purchased from school zone online at their website war at your local educational center. Some titles are available in Spanish however most are available only in English, if you have any questions about the books or computer material you can call customer service at [800] 253-0564. You can also visit their website at www. schoolzone.com.
As always, thanks for the read!
~^V^~ Freak ~^V^~
© 2004 Freak369
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Recommended:
Yes
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