Things have been a little quiet again, since the kids finished up VBS last week. But there are still some exciting things to mention, just not enough about each one to get its own blog post. So here’s a little bit of randomness from our family!
1. We finished up school for the summer – for the most part. There are a couple of unit studies we’re working on (the whole “taking the summer easy, not off” that we did last year). One is from Home School in the Woods, and we’re working on the Middle Ages study. The other is all about science! Funtastic Unit Studies has a great science book we received earlier this week, so we’ll be diving into one of those studies next week (once I decide which unit study to do first and make sure we have all the necessary supplies). Reviews for both of those will be up on the blog in the coming weeks.
2. Munchkin has decided he’d like to play baseball. Since the baseball season for this year has already begun, we bought a family bat and a package of wiffle balls (for training purposes) to help him develop his skills. We’ve been heading out to the park in the evenings, when it starts to cool down, and just practicing hitting. It’s been a lot of fun.
3. How do you succeed at the summer reading program when it’s not all about reading? That’s been our quandary with Seahawk. The teen summer reading program at the library is more about “doing” than about “reading,” so it’s been tricky to figure out what that needs to look like for him. The goal is to have the kids do an activity that somehow relates to a book at the library (or the library itself). For every 5 activities, they get an entry into the drawing that’s held at the end of the summer. So far, he’s read a book about simple magic tricks and done a small show for Will and me. That’s his first activity. Other activities I’m thinking of for him include researching the different varieties of blackberries and writing a short report to go along with the berry-picking we did earlier this week and drawing his own comic book adventure to match up with the Spider-Man comics he’s been devouring so far this summer. If you have other ideas that might fit the bill, let me know in the comments!
4. My birthday is next Friday. In the past, I’ve done big lists that are things you might not know about me just from reading my blog. (I did that in 2013 and 2014.) If you’d like to see something like that again, let me know. If you’d like to see some other sort of specialty post for that day, let me know that, too. I’m willing to consider just about anything.
5. Small Fry is as cute as ever. He’s all about the “new baby,” and talks about him/her a lot. I can only imagine his excitement when we can start feeling movement on the outside. That’ll blow his mind.
So that’s a pretty good summary of things around here this week. What’s going on in your neck of the woods?
Blessings,
What a fun week! On the book program – first, I think that’s a cool way to run a reading program! Second, I’d likely let him pick whatever books he wanted to read and then do an activity based on something in the book. While he’s reading, I’d probably be looking up unit studies or lapbooks or something based on the book. Or, maybe I’d read to him and somewhere in the first couple of days I’d look for an idea to spark an activity. Think: read “Little House on the Prarie,” and make homemade buttermilk. Homeschool Share is probably where I’d start. 🙂
Visiting from the Random 5 linkup! Have a blessed weekend!
DaLynn McCoy recently posted…Random 5 on Friday for June 26
Great idea on implementing that reading challenge from the library. Thanks for the idea, DaLynn!!