Summer's here

Summer's here.  School's out and it's time for reading on the back porch while you eat snacks and dry off after running through the sprinklers...

and disco dance.

This summer I have a new plan to maintain sanity.  Last summer didn't go so well.  I had great plans.  But that was part of the problem.  I had great plans that never happened.  So this year I've significantly scaled back my ambitions and now after four whole days it seems to be working out OK.  The secret to my success?  Clothes pins and door knob hangers.

Each hanger has two sides and two days.  Monday mornings we do a big planning session for the week that lasts all of 5 minutes or less and each morning we redo the plan for the day to move forward things that didn't get done the day before and review what needs to happen for the day.  If we get through half of what we plan for the day I call it good.

Ideally each day will include reading, writing, and math.  Reading is pretty easy to get in since they both love it.  Buddy Boy won't get in the car without a book.  My Girl is following his example.  I'm defining math and writing pretty loosely.  Math includes mostly games like Blackjack, Set, Sudoku, Kakooma, Richard Scary's car and truck car counting card game, and if we really get desperate we might do a few pages of the math workbook that came home from first grade, maybe.  I think it was the workbook they were supposed to have worked on all year, but it doesn't look like the teacher used it at all.  There are also math story books for kids at the library.  The kids like these.  It's reading and sneaks in a little math.

For writing we have comics, poetry, and letters, which include party invitations, and handwriting workbooks, which My Girls loves and Buddy Boy hates.  I include Story Cubes as writing even though there isn't any actual writing involved.

There are also pins for fun or not so fun things (cleaning) to do at home and places to go like the park, swimming, bike rides, shopping etc.  I'm also trying to do little day trips.  I bought a membership to a zoo for the year and that gets me half off a lot of other places I might not otherwise make an effort to get to.  There is a lot to see and do around here if I just get out and do it. 

This week we went to Ardenwood Historic Farm.  We rode the train, fed the animals, pumped water...

and dramatically wiped our brows after watching the Blacksmith do his work.

It was a fun day and this week has been a great start to the summer.  One week down nine more to go.