Текст на английском про лето

Summer is my favourite season. It is warm and sunny. The days are long.

In summer there is no school. I have got three months of holidays!

I go to the river with my friends. We swim and play ball. I like riding my bike too.

In July my family goes to the country. My grandmother has got a garden. There are strawberries and cucumbers in the garden.

I eat a lot of ice cream in summer. Summer is great!

This summer my parents and I went to the Black Sea for two weeks. It was my first holiday by the sea, and I was very excited.

We stayed in a small guesthouse near the beach. Every morning we swam in the sea, which was warmer than the river near our house. In the afternoon it was too hot, so we usually stayed inside and played cards.

One day we took a boat trip along the coast. We saw dolphins! They swam next to our boat for about ten minutes. It was the best moment of the whole holiday.

The only problem was the sun. On the second day I forgot to use sun cream, and my back was red for three days.

Now I am looking at our photos and planning my next trip. Next summer I am going to learn to dive.

For millions of Russian families, summer means the dacha, a country house with a garden, which is usually a few hours away from the city. Some dachas are comfortable modern houses, while others are small wooden huts without hot water. However, almost all of them have one thing in common: a garden full of vegetables, fruit trees and flowers.

Children who spend the summer at the dacha often have more freedom than in the city. They ride their bikes along country roads, swim in lakes and pick mushrooms and berries in the forest. In the evening, the whole family may sit together on the veranda and drink tea from a samovar.

Of course, dacha life is not only about rest. Beds have to be weeded and watered, and in August there are so many apples and cucumbers that grandmothers spend days making jam and pickles.

I have spent every summer at our dacha since I was a baby. When I was younger, I complained about the work, but now I enjoy growing my own tomatoes.

If you get the chance to visit a Russian dacha, take it. You will see a side of the country which tourists rarely notice.

In Russia, as in many other countries, the school summer holidays last about three months. For most pupils, this is the best part of the year. Every so often, however, the question is raised whether such a long break actually does children more harm than good.

Those who favour shorter holidays have a reasonable case. Teachers often notice that pupils return in September having forgotten a considerable part of what they learnt in spring, so the first weeks of the new year are spent revising old material. Moreover, not every family can afford trips or summer camps, which means that some children spend three months in front of a screen while others travel and develop new skills.

On the other hand, the traditional summer was never designed merely as a pause in education. Historically, it gave rural children time to help in the fields, and today it still offers something that a crowded school timetable cannot: unstructured time. Spending weeks outdoors, reading books nobody has assigned and getting to know relatives at the dacha are experiences that shape a person no less than lessons do.

Were the holidays to be cut, schools would also lose a valuable chance to rest. Teachers, after all, need time to recover and prepare, and an exhausted teacher helps no one.

On balance, I would keep the long summer but make better use of it. Free libraries, affordable local clubs and a few light reading tasks would allow every child, regardless of family income, to come back in September refreshed rather than simply rested.