Summer Enrichment Ideas for Teens
Education blogger Vicki Caruana shares an insightful post called School's Out, but Not the Brain! In the post, Vicki addresses the issue of summer for teens. Communities and schools tend to offer great enrichment opportunities for elementary aged kids, but high schoolers need summer educational goals as well. My own Eric is participating in two music camps, doing volunteer work at the Children's hospital and attending two courses at our local community college, so he's pretty busy. But I know plenty of his peers who are going to spend the summer at the University of Xbox. Please check out Vicki's article and make some plans now to keep your teen inspired and enriched.
Apples & Chalkdust
Pearl,
Thanks for your comments - which I will definitely take to heart. I agree with you on the down time and also on the tremendous pressure our kids are under. If you read Vicki's article, you'll see that the classes her child is taking are tuition free. The summer school class Eric is taking at our local CC was actually very inexpensive. I will definitely write a follow up article on some additional, low cost alternatives for teens. Thanks so much for taking the time to comment - it's greatly appreciated! Lisa
Posted by: Lisa Hendey | June 10, 2008 at 08:22 PM
Interesting information, and I am a firm believer that unsupervised kids of any age can get into trouble. However, I hesitate to involve my kids in academics over the summer. This country is already putting enough stress on kids in high school, to get into "the right" college, etc etc. I think kids need to have some good old fashioned down time. Time to just "be." I have always looked for enrichment activities for my 3 daughters - an art or music activity that they love or something new they would like to try. Summer swimming has also been big in our family. Please keep those who don't have a lot of money in mind, too, and provide free/low cost suggestions for those of us who can't afford 2 music camps, summer classes at the community college, Notre Dame, etc.
Posted by: Pearl | June 10, 2008 at 05:02 PM