Throughout the Brain Chase website you read about how the Challenge begins at 9am Eastern on June 30th. But what does that mean exactly? Can children participate even if they’re not logged in at that very moment? Can they participate if they’re traveling, in summer camp, or just not in the mood to log in every day?
The answer is yes!
The 6-week Summer Learning Challenge is designed to be completely flexible. Summers get busy, so we’ve created the Challenge to work around family schedules. It begins at 9am on June 30th, in the sense that Brain Chase posts the first week’s webisode and set of reading, writing, math, and bonus assignments at that moment. But participants can choose log in whenever is convenient. Ideally, you’ll help your kids make time to complete each week’s assignments by the end of the week. We’ve created the learning targets so that they should take roughly an hour each day to complete, or five hours throughout the week—but participants can do those whenever they want. Some will get in a habit of doing an hour each day, while others will prefer to get a lot done at once and then relax the rest of the week.
My own need for flexibility was one of the reasons I decided to use online learning last summer when I wanted my children to keep learning over break. We were busy with swim lessons, friends, camps, and other summer traditions, and it was hard to make time for the summer-bridge workbooks I had purchased. I found that the beauty of online learning was that we could log in at the times that worked best for us—the Internet is open 24/7 after all—and make progress when it was convenient. For us, it wasn’t hard to find a few times each week when nothing was going on, my kids were bored, and we were all glad for a couple of online programs that kept them thinking.
Participants will need a device (desktop, laptop, or tablet) that has decent Internet connectivity. Apart from that, the Challenge is completely flexible, portable, and ready for you to use at the times that work for you this summer. It’s a simple way to build learning into a busy family’s schedule during summer break.