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My children are now about one week into their six week summer vacation. Given the scorching temperatures we had this week, the start date definitely proved to be good timing! This year, my children are in grade 5 and grade 3 of our local public Japanese primary school. Prior to the summer holidays kicking off, they duly brought home a bunch of summer holiday homework. Fortunately, however, they have much lighter workloads than in previous years. It seems the school and teachers are exercising some discretion over what to assign and since many students in these grade levels are already doing extra classes, attending juku etc., they seem to be aiming more to unnecessarily burden the kids. Nobody even had to lug a plant home to tend and report on over the course of the six week break! They still have a few things they need to attend to, however. They both have personal goals they’re supposed to try to do (e.g. fold the laundry, help their younger sister), and a teeth-brushing tracker they’re meant to color everyday. My grade 5 does have some drills, all assigned on his school-issued gigatab tablet, ギガタブレート. My grade 3 is supposed to do at least one enikki 絵日記, picture diary, about what she gets up to during summer break. Of course, alas, they still have to do their self-determined summer research projects, the jiyu kenkyu 自由研究. Nobody seems to have made a start on theirs, exactly, though my elder child tends to like programming and making games for it and he’s certainly been doing that. It would be nice if this summer’s projects could be painless, although perhaps that’s hoping for a bit too much!Still, not having to sit them down every day or so to work through a many-paged workbook will be nice. I’ll take the small wins!