Summer Learning Part I

To help my babies be ready for school next year, and not lose all their learning from the previous year, my sister and I are doing a weekly summer school session.  We take turns preparing a fun activity and lesson for the kids; so it's not quite so overwhelming.  Every Thursday is learning day and the girls really look forward to it.  I've told The Mister that he gets to do some of the heavy hitting topics like...GRAVITY and SCALE and DENSITY.    He's pretty excited.  He has all these science-y ideas. 

My ideas...not quite so ambitious.  My sister did osmosis!!  Uhhh...alright then.  It was a fun project where you stick an egg in vinegar and dye and see what happens.  The kids really enjoyed playing in the egg afterwards.  My Sister's Oldest, loved loved loved her egg's membrane.  tehehehe.  She asked her Mama if the membrane helped the egg think.  Little smarty pants.

For this mama though...we learned about the SEASONS!!!

I prepared some props to give the pictures texture and a bit of fun.  Basically this is cotton balls, different color strips and shapes of fabric and construction paper.  We would talk about what happens in each season and make a picture.


Summer

Fall

Winter

Spring

Then we practiced writing the words of the seasons and then placed them in their Summer Learning Binders...which by the way, is my girls' favorite part of the whole process (keeping and showing off their work).  They can't wait until Daddy comes home so they can show him what they learned and My Youngest looks at hers almost daily.

It really makes me happy to see them enjoy learning.  Another thing we are doing is reading...and I just thought I'd show this as it really makes me happy.

My Oldest, rigging up a trap to catch a monkey.  We're almost done reading Summer of the Monkeys and I just really love seeing a child's imagination take flight. 

So far, Summer of Learning is A++++ in my book.

Thanks for reading!

Heather

Doing it YOUR way.

No sense leaving well enough alone if you ask me.  I gotta be me and my girls gotta be them.  So this means me encouraging them to like what they like and me trying to accommodate things if maybe they're not exactly...girlish. 

My daughters like dinosaurs.  They really like them.  My Oldest will spend hours looking at dinosaur bones on PBS Kids and reviewing their characteristics.  My Youngest also really likes the show Dinosaur train, but she's not as adept at working the interwebs as her big sis.

I encourage this because I really really really want them to like science and math.  This is because I didn't like science and math and really wish I had.  Maybe if I had been more into the sciences, I would have finished college. 

As it is, I feel that my girls are getting a well-rounded childhood from myself and The Mister as we are both knowledgeable in opposite spectrums.  He helps them with the math and science bits and I get them interested in history and reading bits.  So, we really do have it covered between the two of us.  Yay!

So, I am actually going two places with my intro.  One is...if your girls are into something that's typically made for boys...then fix it so it works for them...this works better for girls than boys just because it's harder to make things that are pink and purple boy-ish.  But, if your boy doesn't mind pink, go for it.

I know it's a bit late, as this was My Oldest's Easter basket, but it works on many levels.  You can do this to almost anything.  I didn't want My Oldest to feel bad that her basket was a boy basket.  My Youngest tends to call anything with boy colors handsome and it makes My Oldest sad if anything handsome is said about her.  So, Mama couldn't let it happen.  So I just took some felt...one of my favorite sewing mediums and some markers and I made the boy basket a girl basket.  Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezey.