By: Suguna Ganeshan
High school, college, teenager

How to keep your High Schooler busy during Summer break

Today I was talking to my friend, who has a high schooler and that’s how, this topic came up and I thought I would share some ideas of how to keep your teenage busy during their summer vacation.

1)     Summer Vacation– The number one option is a good long vacation with your children, that is a very nice way to bond with them. Parents by taking out time from your work, you do get to learn a lot from your children, about what they aspire to do, their interest, passion etc.

2)    Summer camps – Children do need down time from school, but they should not be totally ideal. Summer vacations from school are the best time the children get to identify and figure out what their passion and interest areas are. Local community colleges can have sampler courses for them to take, it can be a week-long program or more depends on what courses they take. If your child has enrolled for John Hopkins Talented youth program, this happens by your kid taking PSAT, if you need more info you could go click on this link http://cty.jhu.edu/ctyonline/apply/eligibility.html

3)    Volunteer – Volunteering their time helps keep the high schooler grounded to understand and value what they have got. It’s one of the ways to tell our children that nothing comes free and it comes out of hard work.

4)   Extra-Curricular activity This is the time to encourage in any kind of extra-curricular activity, it might be music, singing, building RC Car or a model plane like my son did.

5)   SAT Preparation – if your child is planning to take SAT and is in the 10th grade, then u want them to use their time in either going for a refresher course or if they need help to get it. Usually there are a lot of model test while preparing for SAT, plan for them to be taken on weekends they are usually 3 hr. test. Parents, you don’t need to know the answers to correct those test, just follow the answer keys to correct them.

6)   Visit college – You don’t need to wait till your kid is in the 11th grade to make college visit, from my experience you could take your kids to visit some of their favorite college as part of your summer vacation. It gives them a lot of motivation and boost their positive energy.

7)    Sign up with college board You could sign up with college board website as early as 9 th grade, they have a lot of info and materials for you to go through. Check this link https://www.collegeboard.org/