If your house is anything like mine, the end of the school year countdown has already begun.  We all know the lyrics from summer movie songs.  Meatballs, 'Are you Ready for the Summer?'  No more pencils, no more books, no more teacher's dirty looks!  Or High School Musical, 'What Time is It?'  What time is it?Summertime! School’s out. Scream and shout.

It's almost the end of the year and the kids are getting restless. Nobody wants to be cooped up indoors when the weather outside is nice and after months of sitting diligently and listening to teachers, your children are ready to get out of there.

Here are tips to keep them (and you) happy through the home stretch.

• Encourage your kids to keep up with their schoolwork. It’s way too easy to let things slide when the weather is nice and kids are feeling worn down from months of study already completed.
• If they’re getting restless or arguing about doing their homework, change up the times they complete it or have them move to a new location.  We did homework on the patio yesterday! 
• Try to stay positive. Instead of arguing, change how your convey message to them. Tell them instead that they will earn new privileges or rewards. Stay away from monetary rewards or buying them “gifts” as ways to keep them studying. That’s basically bribing them.
• When the squirming becomes too much, send them outside and let the sun do its work of re-energizing them. Use the time to take a break yourself. Walk around your neighborhood and tie in school science lessons with nature walks or constellation viewing. This is a fun way to get active with your kids’ studies and spend time together.
• For older children, encourage them to begin preparing for their final exams. The first step is to help them organize their schoolwork from the year to date. Discuss the study tips they’ve learned in school or introduce them to it. Once they’re organized or you see that they’ve prepared themselves, start spending one day a week reviewing older lessons with them. If your children haven’t kept a wall-maintained binder, it’s never too late to start and now is the time to catch them up instead of waiting until the final days before the tests.

 

Let us know how you keep your kids on track through the last month of school on LongIsland.com's Parenting Forum.