So far our summer daycare is going great! Yes, we’re only on Day 3, but right now I’m taking everything one day at a time, with thankfulness, so don’t rain on my parade! {grin}
Here’s the very flexible, very forgiving, first-time-trying-this, summer learning plan I’ve outlined for us. I’ve also seen some people making summer “bucket lists” for their families. Overall, I’m not really a fan of the bucket list philosophy, but I guess this is also along the same lines of “things-we-want-to-do.”
Family Read Aloud Books (with related activities like a very simplistic unit study)
Farmer Boy, Laura Ingalls Wilder (we should be finished next week)
The Stout-Hearted Seven, Neta Lohnes Fraizer
The Black Stallion, Walter Farley
King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table, Roger L. Green (I love Sterling Classics, unabridged! One day we might just have all of them!)
The Ladybug’s Reading
Our Ladybug has not really blossomed into an independent reader yet, but I think she’s ready to with a little help. So I’ll be sitting with her and getting her started with the Boxcar Children. We’ve read #1 as a family and she really enjoyed it, so I think she’ll get into them once I get her started. I’ve also got Charlotte’s Web and the rest of the Little House books ready as options.
The Cowboy’s Reading
He’ll definitely need to read with someone, but I can see that he really wants to get going. So I’m going to work through our Kim Lewis books with him (since they’re already well-known favorites around here!), then see if he’s ready for the Billy and Blaze series. I think he’ll be off and running by the end of the summer.
The Speedracer’s Reading
Umm…we’re just going to casually work on letter recognition and sounds and do lots of story time. He’s not really showing signs of being quite ready for reading right now, but he’s quite interested in being read to, so we just focus on that for right now. And we happened upon a whole set of phonics charts and flashcards at the used homeschool book store last week that are exactly what he used in school this past year, so I’m going to put those up around the playroom.
Family Arithmetic
The Ladybug was really struggling with arithmetic by the end of the school year. I think the root of the problem is that she has not memorized her addition, subtraction, and now multiplication and division combinations well, from 1-14. They’re foundational to the rest of math and she’s gotten behind and discouraged because she’s struggled with them. However; she’s quite capable of memorizing with a little help (as she’s proven over and over with spelling and Bible), so we’re just going to focus on 10-15 minutes a day of written and oral recitation to get them cemented in her mind.
We’re going to make our own flashcards with index cards and “Ms. Maya,” as we’ll be affectionately calling our summer daycare provider, has agreed to help her go over them. We also have that awesome new chalkboard that we made and I think it will be fun for the Ladybug to use it to start “teaching” the boys their 1 and 2 addition and subtraction families.
Natural Science
I’m super excited about this part of our summer. I’m going to be creating “nature journals” for each of the kiddos to write and draw in. I’ve got ideas for making library-style pockets to save pressed leaves in and we’re digging out our field guides for trees, flowers, butterflies, and birds. We’ll be able to take them with us to the zoo or in the car or even to visited family and write down or draw what we see. It’s going to be very fun and I should have a post on how they turn out next week!
These won’t be complete free-for-all books. They’ll be for supervised and directed (but still creative!) efforts. They’ll have different notebooks just to doodle in. I have a feeling I might just want to save these.
Places to Visit (with our Nature Notebooks in hand!)
Virginia Zoo (at least twice–we have a family membership!)
Bluebird Gap Farm (maybe twice–this is a new local discovery for us, and it’s free!)
Virginia Living Museum (they have a summer-only dinosaur exhibit that I think our boys will enjoy!)
Mariners’ Museum (a little pricey, but the boys would be free and it would be something completely different for them–and we might be able to get with some friends for a group discount to save a few more bucks!)
Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens (this one is way more awesome than our local one, still only an hour away, and we can visited the grandparents while we’re there.)
Maymont Estate (again, by the grandparents, and very low fees–even free sections!)
We also got a chart of the American Presidents and a map of the United States (and their capitals) that we’re going to hang up in the playroom. I had some ideas about the crew memorizing them, but we might have to start smaller. Speedracer can barely even pronounce half those names and the Cowboy keeps saying that he wants to learn about “George Washington D.C.” We might just stick with introducing the idea for now.
I am just SO excited about this summer. I feel like it will go fast, but by having a bit of plan we won’t get to the end and feel like it just disappeared and we never did anything with it. What are you looking forward to most this year?
