We used to use Brain Quest and it was painful to get the boys through the mountain of pages. They had to do 5-10 a day! This book has the same stuff but in easier to swallow quantities. About 2/day and it includes optional experiments and physical activity. We'll use these each summer instead!

This book is really great. I think if my son had wanted to do it he would've really been ready for 3rd grade. He completed about 1/4 of the book, no willingly. I had to help him with some because, of course, he hadn't done it yet. That's the point of the book, to get them ready for 3rd grade. He could figure out most of it by the examples. He just doesn't want to read or do homework unless his teacher assigns it. I really thought it was laid out well and would be great for a child that is willing to do it to get ahead.

This is the second summer I've bought these books. I've tried several brands and these have been the most helpful! Each day mixes some easy lessons with more challenging ones. Do they love to do workbooks? Not really...but they at least enjoy using the provided stickers when finishing a lesson (a little box is provided at the bottom of each lesson).

Needs better directions. They assume all kids have learned the same things in school and don't give clear explanations on how to complete some of the pages. Simple definitions example, "root word" would be helpful. Instead, my kids are constantly coming to me for help because the directions are unclear.

Simply put, this is a great activity book to help your child stay mentally active when out of school for the summer. It is not intended to be a full school curriculum, but instead a way to keep children mentally active during the summer break. We have a child leaving 2nd and heading to 3rd grade and were concerned about her skills being lost over the summer. While we do work with her to increase her skillset, we were more concerned about the atrophy that happens when not in school than jumping her ahead. It can be a bit tough for kids returning to school if they go 2-3 months with little book work, so we wanted to help keep her fresh but not fill her summer with full days of 'school' work.

This book is a solid mix of skills with some being easy and others more of stretch. The easy and stretch items will vary with the schooling your child gets and their abilities. I suspect most kids heading to third grade will find most of the work in this book at least a strong refresher and potentially help move them in some areas. This is setup to be a roughly 15 minute daily regime but we have enhanced it with some other work. We have math and science specific activity books as well as a reading workbook that we rotate into the mix. We also keep track of words she has a harder time spelling and use them make a 10 spelling word weekly review and test (review for 4 days and test on the fifth). Most of these topics are in the bridge activities book, but we felt a little extra attention would not hurt and some variety in what she is working on keeps things fresh. We do spelling, reading/writing and a couple 'pages' of work each weekday which comes out to about a 45-60 minute batch of work. The Summer Bridge Activities books is a constant in the mix with a page used almost every day and the other work rotated.