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Summer Vacation? Seriously?

By Jennifer Griffith on May 24, 2014

So, it’s summer vacation. And I guess at the Griffith household that means it’s time for a vocab review.

Heh heh heh.

Our oldest is going into his junior year this fall, and he’s taking the PSAT-NMSQT, the worst acronymed pre-college test ever. Besides a precursor to the SAT, it’s a qualifying test for the National Merit Scholar thingy. There’s a math section and a verbal section, as you might guess. He’s a reader, but not a reeeeeeeeeader (like our 11 year old, who reads late into the night hiding under the blankets when she thinks we think her light is out.) So he might need a little vocabulary review.

Enter the “Quack” DVD. We ordered this online. It came this afternoon, and we popped it in the player.

“Hey! Kids! It’s time to watch TV!” (Not that they hadn’t already watched a few episodes of Mythbusters already this weekend. Like eight.) They all gathered in the living room and watched this thing packed with movie clips describing some of the likely vocabulary words that will appear on the SAT (and hence the PSAT.) At the end of the first 20-word review, there was a quiz.

All five of them took the test. Three got 100%. The six year-old dropped out. The nine year-old filled in the answers as my husband read them.

Now, that’s summer vacation, kids-of-the-English-major style.

We should probably chase this activity with Otter Pops.

Feel free to threaten your own kids that if they don’t behave, you’ll send them to the Griffiths’ for summer break.

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Posted in Family, Reading | Tagged parenting
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