Today is the first official day of summer. We've been out of school for more than three weeks and I'm chomping at the bit to get back into it. Our kids think I'm crazy!
This happens every year. I get more than two weeks away from school and I'm itching to go back. We have eight more weeks of vacation, but I've already got most of our curriculum planned for next year. I can't help myself...I just happen to love home schooling our monkeys.
A week or so ago, I ventured off on my own to Barnes & Noble's, my Educator Card tucked safely into my wallet, for an afternoon of pure bliss. Curriculum shopping, that is. Give me an iced chai latte, some spending money and a book store and I'm one happy girl. Here's some of the stuff I came up with.
Before school let out in May, Scotty and I did a huge reorganization of our school space. We moved and switched out book shelves, put the piano in a different place, cleaned out workbooks and texts and made the kids' work area bigger. (No clutter. Wow. I didn't think I was capable of making a clutter free space. Come to find out I am. Now keeping it that way...that will be a challenge.) We've got our Language Arts, math, history, geography and science materials, a great teaching space and our schedule all worked out. I say, let's go!
The kids, not so much.
No matter...we have some fun summer time things planned to occupy our time
On June 4th, both Maya and Scott began a Youth Bowling League that will go until August 13th. They meet every Saturday for a couple of hours. In addition to that, we signed up for a program called "Summer Unplugged" with AMF Bowling Centers and all four of us get to bowl two free games a day. The kids are always getting free games, too, for being on a league, so we have already spent a great deal of time at the South Hills Bowling Center. I'd forgotten how fun bowling is, and the four of us can do this together.
There are a few theaters here that show rated G and PG movies twice a week at a buck a piece. That began on June 14th and goes until the 10th of August. It's a great way to spend two hours out of the heat, even though we've seen many of the movies. For a dollar, repeats are no big deal. Another cool thing is that there is a Dollar General right next to the theater, so Mylee gets her Sour Patch Kids and Scotty gets his Milk Nuds. (Milk Duds to all of you non-Wings.) :)
We have decided to give the kids a break from their swim team in lieu of lap swim on a weekly basis as a family. They are still New WAVE swimmers...at least we hope they decide to continue once September comes, but for right now, we've decided to let them have a summer break.
Scotty is signed up for a science camp the entire last week of July, and Mylee's camp is a two day affair the first week of August. It's a summer enrichment program run by UNC at Chapel Hill and the Morehead Planetarium and is sponsored by Glaxo Smith Kline. It's called Science in the Summer and the theme for this year is Magnets and Electricity.
I'm always looking for ways to enhance our science curriculum and am excited for both kids to take part in this program. It's being held in nine different counties here in North Carolina and the coolest thing of all...it's absolutely free of charge.
Both kids are signed up for the summer reading programs through our local library, (although getting Maya to read is like getting her to breathe...it takes no effort whatsoever.) Piano practice is a requirement, and once a week math class is in effect throughout the summer. They seem to forget what they don't keep up with, especially for math.
Other than that, we plan to swim, most likely at the Carpenter Village pool and at Lake Johnson pool. Steven is taking the month of July off from work after way too many business trips the first half of the year. We will sail, bowl, hopefully travel a bit, and enjoy the awesome North Carolina summer as a quartet. We'll throw some museums in for good measure, possibly a car race and maybe a big amusement park adventure in as well.
I will tweak and change and add to my already hefty curriculum for the next eight weeks and will dive into it with much enthusiasm come our first day in class on August 15th...and no doubt drive the kids, and possibly Steven, crazy with talk of all that I plan to do with a new school year until then. And I won't feel guilty about it at all. :)
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