So, your son/daughter has either just finished their GCSEs or their summer holiday is fast approaching, and now, on top of your already busy life, you need to find a way of keeping them occupied for at least the next six weeks. In this blog, we’d like to try to alleviate some of your stress and provide you with a few ideas for how to keep them productive once school has finished.

1. Take a Break

After a long and hopefully productive year at school, one of the first, best, things your teen is likely to want to do, is to take a break. Now, I’m not saying you should encourage them to go and play video games for the rest of the summer, but recharging their batteries is really important in helping them to process all of the information they have just learned at school, as well as allowing them to get some me-time.

Why not suggest they try meditating or meeting some friends to go for a walk in the park, or for a game of football or rounders?

2. Read Some Books

Reading may be one of the last things on their mind, but even if they are not an avid reader, there are many reasons why you should encourage them to start reading more regularly. Not only will they begin to form a habit over the summer holidays, reading helps them to expand their vocabulary. It also improves their concentration span and ability to focus for longer periods of time, as well as helping them to learn about new ideas (whether they are reading fiction or non-fiction).

3. Learn a Skill

On average, the summer holidays will be around six weeks long. That’s 1008 hours! Imagine how much they could learn during that time. If they spent even just an hour a week over the course of their holidays learning a new skill, by the end of the summer imagine what they could be capable of. They could learn a new language (especially if you are going on holiday), a new sport, or how to play a musical instrument.

Holiday camps are a great way to get them signed up for lots of new activities, and it also gets them out the house in a supervised and controlled manner for a period of time too!

4. Get a Summer Job

Okay so this one may take a little more persuasion, but it’s really a win-win situation! They could earn some pocket money on the side, as well as some hopefully relevant experience to what they’d like to do later in life and you would get your house back for a few hours. Getting a summer job or internship could be really useful not only for the experience to put on their CV but for university applications too.

5. Get Ahead of School

This last idea may make you laugh out loud a little, but wouldn’t it be the best feeling for your teen to go back to school next year and already be ahead of all their classmates? They could spend a few hours each week reading over their notes from last year to consolidate what they learned, or they could use online platforms like Get My Grades.

Get My Grades allows you to track where their weakest areas are and displays them to you in a really simple traffic light system so you can help them target these weakest areas easily in order to improve their scores. It also has content which goes beyond their course, which means that they can start learning content for next year putting them in a really good position for when school starts!

We’ve even re-written this blog to be student friendly, so you can share it with your teen and they can blame us for all of these great ideas, on the off-chance they really were imagining just sitting round playing video games all summer! Remember, even taking a break counts as being productive so long as they can find a balance between taking a break and doing other things.

A Get My Grades account gives your child access to:

A huge range of resources and online textbook content, arranged into units, topics and subtopics.
Over 75,000 practice questions of varying types, like those on exams - not just multiple choice - written by experienced teachers.
Instant feedback after each question, with student-friendly mark schemes and explanations.
Automated tracking, so that you can see where they are doing well and where they are struggling - which you just can't get from a traditional textbook or revision guide!

Get My Grades subscriptions cost just £9 per student per month, or £75 per student for access for the year - with all our subjects and qualifications included, including many of the most common GCSE and IGCSE courses.

Sign up now to explore the platform - and, to give you a chance to start making the most of Get My Grades, use discount code MONTH1 to get your first month for just £1!