PCS Series: Tips to help your military kiddos avoid the summer PCS slide

[00:00:00] Alison: Hello, hello and welcome back to the show. So, continuing on our , PCs series. We're gonna talk today about, I have some tips for you to avoid the summer PCs slide. So w your kids with school, you hear summer slide, right? That's, we, we hear that term a lot as, we wanna give them a break. We want a break.

[00:00:22] Alison: And so we might spend. a lot of time at the pool or vacationing or whatever and, we let go some of the, the school stuff, which I, I'm on board, I'm on board for.

[00:00:36] Alison: Often as we're moving through the year. We we're tired, right? Our kids are tired, but as parents we're tired too because we're responsible for, well, I mean, I guess it depends on your family, but, making sure the homework gets done, da, da, da. And so parents are looking for a break too, honestly.

[00:00:54] Alison: But there's a few things that we can do, , to try to help keep our kids, , sharp and not in a. You know, really overbearing kind of way. This is just like a, a couple of cool ways that we can help. So, , the whole point was , so the regular kids, right? We have summer slide. Everybody's heard that term, but if you happen to be moving over the summer, right?

[00:01:19] Alison: Because. Summer's premo moving season. That's why we're doing these. This series right now is primo moving season for military family. So you kind of, you get the on top of the regular summer where you know your kids spending all day at the pool or whatever the case might be. You might have a move on top of that.

[00:01:37] Alison: And so what are some things that we could do to help our kids, not. Enter into the next school year behind the curve. And, and again, I know that that is, especially when you've got a move coming up, it's like really? Let's add some more things onto the list, but I'm, I, there's a couple really cool ideas, , that I found that I wanted to share with you that really don't have to add a lot of work to what you already do, and you can kind of incorporate it into your move and into your trip.

[00:02:09] Alison: So Las so let's just dive right into it. The first thing, , and this is all coming from, we talked, , in April month of the military child. I told you about the book seasons of my military student, and we talked about the different transition periods and things like that. So this is also coming from that same material, the seasons of my military student.

[00:02:27] Alison: So I just wanted to put that out there. But the first thing is, reach out to your teacher before the summer starts, right? And just, and especially if you're moving, you can ask them to put together a packet for you. Hey, are there, are there things that my kid really needs to work on , , that would be good practice for them?

[00:02:44] Alison: Are there online resources that you have that you can give me? But even if you get, and you know, teachers have a ton of this information, it's just. Asking them to do it and they don't mind, right? They give 'em a little, give 'em a little notice. Don't ask like the last week of school, but like, Hey, would you mind, you know, putting together a couple of things that we could work on, over the summer so you could ask the teacher.

[00:03:05] Alison: There's that, , right off the bat, if they have either a packet that they can put together for them or a workbook or, you know, whatever that, that you could take with you on your trip. , , so there's a couple, the major subjects, right? For reading, , , , it's one of those things that really can get put to the side unless you've got kids that really like reading and , I love to read, so Savannah has picked up on that.

[00:03:29] Alison: Sophia's getting there, but we really have pushed reading in our family a lot. So that's not new for them. Like that's all the time we always talk about reading and, , we still read together every night. So, that's not anything that's, that's really hard for us, but if you, if your kid has a challenge with reading or whatever , there's some good ideas in here.

[00:03:49] Alison: So you can, if your kid has a tablet or an iPad, they, you can get eBooks and then they can, you know, look through books electronically and then you don't have to worry about having to take 'em back to, , a library.

[00:04:02] Alison: You can check with your outgoing school or your incoming school, the school that you're going to I sending, sending and receiving. You're sending school, receiving school. And see if they have a list of reading for the summer and pick some of those books up. Put 'em on again. Put 'em on your tablet and you can have them electronically so you don't have to get 'em.

[00:04:22] Alison: From the library, , you can have those books already ready to go, that the kids are gonna work through, , through the move. , if your school does not have one, the D O D M W R has a summer reading program. I will link to that in the show notes. And so they're, you know, they're just reading challenges that it's basically tracking how many minutes a day your student reads and then, They can earn prizes and things like that.

[00:04:45] Alison: It's something that would be easy to, to do. , and then math, some of this stuff is like, yeah, okay, I get it right? Math flashcards, hello. , that's, it's really easy, right? So addition and subtraction, if your kids are younger, Multiplication and division. If your kids are a little bit older, and if you've got like high school students, they can create their own flashcards that have, that might have formulas or measurement conversions or whatever, you know, math that they're in, algebra, geometry, calculus, they're, , can make flashcards for that stuff.

[00:05:16] Alison: You might even be able to find that. I feel like you can find the most anything on Amazon these days, or Google. So a couple of cool things though that you could do, and then, and again, this just incorporates it into your trip, is do gas math. So before you travel, If you're gonna do, if you're road tripping it out there, right, have your student calculate the number of miles to the end location.

[00:05:40] Alison: And then for multiple day travel, you can figure out how many miles we're gonna go each day estimate, how much gas will be used throughout the trip. And then as you are going and stopping and filling up the gas tank and determining the price per gallon and da, da, da, da, da, da. At the end of it, you can look at those calculations, okay, this is what I predicted, this is what it actually was.

[00:06:02] Alison: And then, , you can compare your budget predictions to what the actual gas usage was and the cost, which is, that's a great way to include math and then also a little real world for them, right? It's stuff's expensive, so it's a little eye-opening in that way. And the same thing, you can do the same thing with food.

[00:06:20] Alison: Right. So you can, it's a similar budgeting practice, right? So what would you, what do you estimate for each meal versus what the actual cost is? And then for, example, you can, , have your, your student practice real quick calculation. So if you're sitting down to eat a meal and you're going to, everybody's gonna order, have your kid practice.

[00:06:43] Alison: , adding the menu price plus the tax and doing the, adding the meal cost in their head before the waitress delivers the bill. And then how close to the final bill was the student able to estimate around or calculate? So that's pretty cool. , and then another thing you can do is if you're gonna pay cash for stuff or like snacks and things like that, challenge your student to quickly determine how much change you're gonna get back when you pay cash.

[00:07:08] Alison: Cuz oh my lord. Is this, are we getting too old? I might be aging myself. And this is one of those things, I can see it being a meme, have you noticed that when you go to stores and things like that and when there's a younger person that's the cashier, they cannot. Make change without looking at the number on the screen.

[00:07:30] Alison: And that is what they're gonna give you back. Like if that's not correct, or if you're like, oh, I found a dime, so I'm gonna give you this in a dime. So then in my brain, I know I'm gonna get back a solid dollar as opposed to a bunch of change, whatever, and they are like a deer in headlights. They cannot figure it out.

[00:07:45] Alison: So I think that this is a good skill to have your kid practice so that they can actually know how to make change from cash without having it told you on a computer. Okay. And then, reading and math, those ones are, kind of easy to put forward. And then if you're looking at social studies and science, that one can be hard.

[00:08:03] Alison: But there's a couple cool things that they talked about in the, again, seasons of my military student is where I'm getting this information from. , map planning. I think this is really cool. If your kid is of age, you can give your student. A couple of different maps and have them map out their route. If you're traveling across several states, they can map out, , the entire trip and that helps them visualize to.

[00:08:27] Alison: Where they're going spatially, like what's happening? Okay, do you see this? This is the whole United States. This is where we are. This is the state we're going to, these are the states we're going to go through, da da da da da, da. I think that that's really cool. And that just get your child again.

[00:08:40] Alison: So it's like geography, and then as they're planning that route that you're gonna take, they can look at, , national parks, cities, landmarks, things like that. And then what you can do is to layer this into. The reading aspect of it is have them research it. , give your kids something to do.

[00:08:57] Alison: This would be premo, right? So, okay, we're, we're gonna PCs, this is what we're gonna do. Here's a map. This is what we're gonna do. This is the places that we're gonna go through. Get a couple of books. Go to the library. Find out the capitals or big cities that you're gonna go through and let your kid do some research and see what are things that you can do there.

[00:09:14] Alison: What are some, , interesting. Points to stop at. What are, if there's a state park or, or a national park, what could you do in there? What are some interesting tidbits about that? And then they can almost play tour guide as you're going through different stages of the trip. So that's, I think that that is a, that's a cool idea.

[00:09:32] Alison: I think , that's something that I think my kids would get really behind is having that map. Like, that's pretty cool. And then, oh, I'm gonna plan the trip and they can do some research and they're gonna know all the facts and things like that. I just, I think that that. Is a really cool thing that we might, although I have to say in my.

[00:09:49] Alison: Top tips for PCSing, especially if you're gonna do a Diddy move and your kids are younger, send them to family. My girls go to grandma's house. They go like three or four days before we're actually gonna move. And then they don't come to our new location until the house is done, so like three or four days later.

[00:10:08] Alison: So they're like, Two weeks at grandma's house and then mom and dad pack up the house, load the truck, drive the truck, unload the truck, and they're not part of any of that. I've just found that to be easier. So I'm not sure, although I have to say when we did move from Florida to Washington state, two moves ago, obviously the girls came with us, and we did a huge road trip.

[00:10:28] Alison: It was almost three weeks long and we saw a bunch of stuff and they were too young at that time. I mean, Sophia hadn't even started kindergarten yet, so they were too young at that time to do any of this stuff. But I think now, It could be a cool way to incorporate them into the move. So just something to think about.

[00:10:42] Alison: , so that's it. A couple of math things, a couple of, , reading things. And then I really love the, again, if your kids are a little bit older, get out an old school map, roll it out on the table, draw your lines, and really let them get invested in it. It could be a really great and positive way.

[00:10:58] Alison: Also to, again, one of my PCs tips is to create a bucket list for your. Destination your new duty station so that you have something to look forward to. And when the kids are getting down on, oh, we've gotta leave, we gotta blah, blah, blah. I know it's gonna be hard, you know, you gotta acknowledge those feelings.

[00:11:16] Alison: But then at the same time, you have all these things I know, but you know, we're gonna go here and we can go see this and we can, and , , get excited about that next place. And I think that map and the research could ha be another way to just kind of get them on board for that. So I hope this was helpful for you guys.

[00:11:31] Alison: Short and sweet, until next time.