Summer Brain Quest: Between Grades 1 & 2

I'll be honest, I was skeptical. Despite the great reviews I was still expecting to have to "gently force" (re: coerce, threaten, bribe) my daughter to work on this book during the summer. But I felt strongly that, after a crazy year of virtual school, she could really use some practice before starting 2nd grade. She side-eyed the book when I first pulled it out, but as soon as I opened it up and showed her the map and the stickers and the fun game-like assignments, she was completely won over. She sat down and plowed through the entire first level in one sitting! If anything, I'm finding myself having to pace her by reminding her to take breaks. It does take a little oversight from me at times, when she has trouble understanding the directions and when she needs me to check her work. And there have been 1 or 2 lessons so far that involved things she says she didn't learn this past year (it's possible that she just forgot). But to be fair, my daughter often asks for help even when I know she can figure it out on her own, so some of that is just specific to her. I think the level of difficulty is appropriate, at least so far (she's on level 3 right now). Some lessons are pretty easy for her, but others are harder/require more thought. And I can see that she's practicing a lot of things she was doing this past year. A good mix of skill levels. She likes that every page is different - rotates through math, science, social studies, reading/writing - so she's not stuck doing one specific thing for a long time. The ONLY negative I can come up with is that I can already tell this isn't going to last her all summer. I'm really wishing they'd made an entire series! I went ahead and ordered the Brain Quest 1st grade book (I think it's intended to be used as supplemental work during the year, but I'll be using it as summer practice) AND I already ordered the summer book for next year (2nd to 3rd grade). I looked at reviews for a LOT of summer practice workbooks before choosing this one, and I'm glad I spent the extra time to find this one. The fact that Brain Quest manages to make the learning fun makes all the difference. Kudos to them!

My son normally gets bored with activity books. This one kept him going. He particularly liked the progress tracker with stickers.

Let me start by saying that my daughter is NOT a "very advanced" prodigy. She tested well in kinder and first, but has always struggled with actually reading and is a very reluctant writer. I've spent the past month focusing exclusively on reading and writing, especially since she essentially missed out on the second half of first grade with all the forced closures, and she was pretty fed up with me and schooling in general. I got this book to help give her a broader range of subjects and to help keep her interest in learning, and I could not have picked a better book. I went with the summer bridge because of the way her first grade year was interrupted, along with really wanting to make sure she was at that level before moving on. The book is based on an adventure map (which is located at the back of the book and perforated to tear out), and you follow the adventure map to complete "quests" (activities). Each time the child completes an activity, they earn a sticker to mark their completion on the map. There's bonus stickers they can earn for fun by doing extra activities, too. My daughter absolutely loves this book, and has completed a full unit a day, which really helps to keep our learning process moving. She's actually excited to sit down and do homeschool with me. She'll even do her writing just to get to do this book. My main complaint is that some of these activities seem a little advanced for an "average" 1st-2nd grader. For instance, she did not know the functions of the parts of a plant (which is very early in the book, like one of the first activities) and she was definitely unable to read The Tortoise and the Hare on her own (which is early in unit 2). But I've actually been able to really utilize this. We find read-along books on YouTube about Jack and the Beanstalk and Cinderella, etc, and I've been able to find small science and other learning videos to go along with other assignments. I read The Tortoise and the Hare to her and ran my finger under the words as I read. It's really made things more engaging. We like this book so much that I'm planning on ordering the 2nd grade book next, and then the next bridge.

We have purchased the other grade level workbooks in the past by BrainqQuest and those were great content but kind of felt like a chore and the organization made it so that we couldn't just do the pages in order. We stopped purchasing them after grade 2 because my kids just weren't using them. These Summer workbooks are great because the pages are organized into levels with a good mix of different review subjects and you can just have the kids work on the pages in order. The workbook also comes with a page to put stickers on for every page completed. Very motivating for younger children especially. Our school district went on strike for a few days recently and one of my kids class wasn't even assigned any work because her class doesn't have a real teacher and only has a long-term substitute (our district is a gigantic mess, but we are okay). I pulled these workbooks out and both of my kids loved them. They were excited to see all the content that they've worked on already this school year, and even my other child who had worked on assigned school homework from his class wanted to do this in addition even though I told him he didn't need to. Great purchase, we'll continue to get these for the coming grades.

とてもいい！

Useful

Really good for keeping learning from last year top of mind during the summer in easy bursts.

A mi hijo le encantó este cuaderno de verano, sobre todo por la gran cantidad de pegatinas chulas que trae y que muchas de las actividades son presentadas como juegos (laberintos, etc.).

This book has been helpful all summer holiday