The bane of summer: homework

Yes, summer homework is a thing in Japan. I would speculate that it is the top cause of stress in children at this time of year. However, it's not just stress for the kids, but for parents too. You will find at this time of year, one of the most talked about topics on parents groups (for people living in Japan) on Facebook and even Line, is the summer homework. 

My four kids go back to school on Thursday, September 1st. My Japanese husband and I are on the same page when it comes to summer homework. We don't believe in it, so we don't enforce our children to do it. But for the sake of their own stress levels we gently encourage them to do a little bit.

Before the pandemic I would tell the teachers in advance that my kids wouldn't be doing it. We had the valid excuse that we would be home in Ireland for the summer. Since the pandemic I just write in their "renrakucho", a type of notebook that is exchanged between the teacher and parent/s, that they didn't do it, or very little of it, because we "were too busy".

The teachers never pry as to what equates "too busy". And in fact, to date, they have never minded that my kids don't do the summer homework. Its not like they fall behind in class for not doing it. And its one less pile of homework for the teacher to correct.

However, there is one element of the summer homework that my kids usually do. And that is the "jiyu kenkyu", which translates to 'independent research', but basically it is a project of their choice. Or as EdtheEd put it; self study. In our school, most kids make something for "jiyu kenkyu".

The reason my kids opt to do this element of the homework is that it is the one piece of homework every single child in my children's school seems to do. You see there are actually plenty of families like mine that opt not to do all the homework. Perhaps the reason that everyone does the "jiyu kenkyu" is because it is one of two things that is put on display for parents day in September. 

Normally, what I do for the "jiyu kenkyu" is bring the kids somewhere fun to do it, so its less like homework and more like the kind of thing we'd be doing over summer holidays anyway.

This year, my girls wanted to make their own wind chimes, like blow the glass and everything. But the workshop for blowing your own wind chime is for children in 3rd grade or above. As my youngest is only in 2nd grade it would have been unfair to her. So instead I found a workshop, in the ever scenic Kawagoe to boot, where you can just decorate your own wind chimes. So that is what they did, and had great fun doing it.

Do your children have summer homework? For those in Japan with kids, what did your children do for the "jiyu kenkyu" this year?