It's Summer School Jack!

OK. We don't have TV. But we have watched several episodes of Duck Dynasty and Sweetheart just loves that show. We watch it online after it has already aired. We have a lot of respect for the folks on the show and she likes it a lot so I thought, "Why not have a Duck Dynasty birthday party this year?"

She said no thank you.

Humph. And there was a lot of cute stuff on Pinterest too.

Double humph.

So.....I already had a pin board called "Language Arts Boot Camp." That's what I was calling what we were going to do this summer. We pretty much ignored language arts this year in school because we had a newborn and were doing good to get everything else done. Therefore, we are spending our summer break cramming some major language arts down little throats. Er...filling their little heads full of knowledge I mean.

Why not combine the two ideas? Yes sir. We are going to have camo pencils and use some camo duct tape on our binders and we are going to have us a fun theme for summer school!

SUMMER BOOT CAMP.

I'm the drill sergeant.

I might wear a whistle.

So last night I was trying to really start thinking about how this will all look. S was in the Navy (no camo there, but boot camp nonetheless) and what they did a lot of was drill.

This week we are taking the IOWA test with our homeschool group. I am already seeing what gaps my girls have in their education thanks to this test. So I know for a fact they need drills on grammar and punctuation and capitalization and all that jazz.

In the 90s when I was a public school teacher, we used to do DOL or Daily Oral Language. You would have a few sentences on the board when the kids got there and they would copy them down in their journals, making corrections of the on-purpose mistakes. THIS is what my girls need. Not every day...but some.

So I know we will be drilling rules. And I'm going to be doing writing instruction with each of them separately. The other girl will be in charge of playing with the baby. She's such a sponge right now. Little Bit sat down and played play food with her last night. In just a few minutes she had learned to shake the pepper on her food, squirt the ketchup bottle, and pretend to eat it all. They are so proud to teach her things. So they will enjoy that job.

Spelling will also be taking place. And reading practice. And math will continue 3x a week. Oh there is a lot to be done this summer. I sure wish we could just take off, but no. We have much to do.

And don't think there won't be push ups involved.

By the way, the drill sergeant doesn't have to do push ups.

Just wanted to clear that up.

Here's my Pinterest board for boot camp.