Photo of our junior infant with July Homework.
I WANT TO HUG the entire staff of Clonmel Presentation Primary School for encouraging their students to fill in all the pages of their school workbooks--even after school has finished for the year.
I've watched our five year old pull out Jolly Phonics and her Maths Workbook because she has been instructed to finish all the pages before school starts after summer. That means whenever there's a rainy day outside and no paint inside, Mia begins in earnest. As you can hear in her Audioboo, she doesn't view the workbooks as a chore. She sees them as something she can do on her own to gain the sense of pride and accomplishment. When she finishes a few pages, she presents them to me in hope that they might open the prospect of a trip to the corner shop for something special. And she's normally right about that. She doesn't get those corner shopping sprees during the school year--gold stars suffice.
I don't remember sitting in my bedroom as a child and finishing school workbooks. I think it's a good use of time and money, especially in an era when the cost of school workbooks has become a national talking point. I don't think Mia would feel the same sense of urgency if she worked with loose leaf papers stapled together. Something about the workbook itself is part of the process she enjoys when finishing a section before presenting it for review.
