Monday, April 27, 2009

Summer Plans


Now that school is over and summer is upon us, the boys and I have a tradition of sitting down on the first day of summer break and writing out a summer schedule. We sit down with a piece of paper and write down all the fun stuff we did last summer that we want to do again. We also write down new things we want to do.

We have dubbed May the "Month of Exercise". Our goal is to do some sort of exercise every week day. We wrote out a long list of different kinds of exercise. These include walking the dog in our neighborhood, going to the dog park, riding bikes, hiking, swimming, badmitten, batting practice and indoor exercise for rainy days including bowling, walking at the mall, balloon volleyball inside and wii bowling and tennis. It may be an ambitious project, but we are going to try. May is warm here in the Houston area, but it isn't nearly as bad as the other summer months.

We also write down a weekly schedule that we keep throughout the summer. For instance, last year it was:

Monday - Library, Craft Day
Tuesday - Dog Park, Baking Day, Fencing
Wednesday - Chore Day
Thursday - Fencing
Friday - Lunch with Dad, Friend over at 3:00 pm

I like to use a computer program and type out different activities to do each week on a calendar. Word has calendar templates for this. We like a little program called "Printmaster". I make the calendar cheerful and colorful with lots of fun pictures. Then I print it out and hang it where the boys can access it. They feel empowered because they helped create the schedule and can look forward to certain activites. We've done this for the past few years and it really helps keep us on track and keeps the "I'm bored" comments down to a minimum.

This year we are also working on a few larger projects around the house. We have high ceilings in our great room. I noticed the other day that there are some cobwebs forming way up there. We are going to work together to clean these off. We also need to straighten out the garage a bit. It isn't horrible, but it is in need of some organization. We also need to clean out the school cabinet and the art cabinet. The boys took care of the art cabinet this morning and it only took them about 10 minutes to go through their supplies and purge and organize. We will tackle one large project a day until they are done.

We want to feel a sense of accomplishment at the end of our summer. We want to use our time wisely. But don't get me wrong. Summer is definitely a time for relaxation. While the rules don't relax, the schedule definitely does. We will have fun times making ice cream, swimming, going to the beach, going to the movies, have friends over, making movies and picking blackberries. We are trying to fit a vacation into our budget/schedule this year.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Finishing up the year


We really pushed ourselves this year and as a result will be finished with our year's work tomorrow! Wow! I toyed with the idea of ordering all the new books and letting them start, but with a few months break in between, the majority of what they learned would have been forgotten. I've decided to start up school a little early for the 2009-2010 school year. I'm not one of those year round schoolers. The reason is because my husband is still in college and we want to be off when Dad is off. We are really looking forward to the summer. We don't have any big plans yet. We are just looking forward to the summer break when we can cut loose. Bring on the lazy days of summer!

Moving my Homeschool blogging to this new blog...

I've decided to move all my homeschooling blogging to this new blog. My other blog was getting cluttered with other stuff. I hate clutter so here is a new box for my homeschooling thoughts. Enjoy!
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