Finding Balance Between "Vacation" and "Education" During Summer Break

Looking for a way to keep your kids from losing the last 9 months of education over their summer vacation?  Want to ACT prep help for your new junior over the summer, or increase your new senior's previous ACT score?  Keep reading!

FIRST:  For parents who have high schoolers who want to score 5 -10 points higher on their future ACT/SAT test, or have middle schoolers who want to increase their reading comprehension skills and math skills, here's what I learned at the State Board of Education meeting last November:

The "March2Success" program is sponsored by the US Army and is available to the public on-line for FREE.  Parents, teachers, mentors and KIDS as young as 8th graders can log-in to the March2Success program whenever they have free time on their home computer.  March2Success is designed to first assess a student's math, science and English skills and discover the student's weaknesses.  Next it will kick out lesson plans for your student based on their weaknesses.  Reading comprehension is a big focus.  March2Success has a 70% success rate getting kids out of remediation and back into regular English classes.


March2Success also has on-line ACT/SAT practice tests / flash cards available for your student; the questions come right off the ACT/SAT tests themselves.  There is also a computer game in the March2Success program called "Zero Hour Threat" that tests your students' knowledge in a fun and engaging way.  The best part is that if the student does not get the question right, the game immediately gives him/her feedback as to why he/she got the question wrong.  83.6% of the students using March2Success increased their math general purpose test scores using this program.

Here's how to access this awesome tool:  http://www.march2success.com/.  A registration site will pop up to get your student registered for the program.


SECOND:  For parents who have elementary school kids, below is a list of educational on-line sites that you can log into for your child to review skills and to learn new ones in preparation for the 2012-2013 school year.  

www.ixl.com
www.mrnussbaum.com
www.funbrain.com
www.janbrett.com
www.nationalgeographic.com/kids
www.kidport.com
www.teachingtables.com
www.theholidayzone.com
www.nasa.gov/kidsclub.com
www.starfall.com
www.randomhouse.com/kids/magictreehouse/activities.html
www.sheppardsoftware.com/math.htm
www.mathisfun.com
www.coolmath4kids.com
www.mathplayground.com
www.disney.go.com
www.pbskids.org
www.abcya.com
www.brainpop.com (This one costs $ but is very educational - you can try a "trial" period)

That's it!  Enjoy your summer with your kids!