Here Is Where Our Summer Stands

So we started the school year about a month later than usual. Therefore, we are not yet finished with said school year. This is discouraging no matter how much you mentally prepare yourself. Little Bit is aiming to be though by the 4th of July, and I believe she will make it. She's almost there.

Sweetheart, however, has worked (or NOT worked) herself right out of a summer break. If she's lucky, she'll have a 4 day weekend before 11th grade starts. Sigh. We've talked all we can talk. We've punished. We've encouraged. The saying is TRUE: You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it finish it's work on time unless it wants to. Well, it goes something like that.

But she is down a few subjects. At maximum, her school day should take her 5 hours. Therefore, if she gets on up like she's used to doing in the school year anyway, and starts by around 7am, she should be done by noon. Or, she can sleep in a bit and have a little to do after lunch. That's up to her. It's Wednesday of our new summer schedule and so far she was worked until nearly 4 or 5pm every day.

Horse. Water.

Anyway, in other news. OF COURSE because it's summer I had to completely rearrange the house. You know, we didn't do a thing to the house last summer when Dad was in the hospital. So some cleaning and organizing is in major order around here. S was able to help me move the big stuff around and get the bunk beds re-painted (this time for Little Bit and Bee) over Memorial Day weekend. I wouldn't have chosen to move all the stuff all at once like that, but that was the time he had to help. So, the furniture is in place, but boy the mess we made!

It's hard to feel accomplished when what you did one day was sit down with a washcloth and wipe down all the color pencils because something sticky was all over them. And then I sorted markers (throwing away those that had dried out) and pens and pencils and blah blah blah. All that work on little things doesn't make much of an impact but hopefully we'll be more organized this year!

Little Bit and I are painting the front room. In the past, this room has been a playroom (for the older girls when they were little) and a homeschool room. Now I am turning it into kind of a homeschool room for Baby Bee. You know, Baby Bee who turned 4 a few weeks ago. (!)

I guess really some other posts need to be made. Just too much to catch up on here.

Summary:

We are still in school and that stinks.
We have made a huge mess in the house in the quest to get organized.

It's a good thing there is a date on this post b/c this could easily be mistaken for another previous summer. My life is nothing if not predictable.

The Summer So Far

First a note about the blog:

I'm so sorry, blog world. I really miss you. I do. And I miss the readers I used to have which I'm sure have mostly gone away now. 

At one time I had a kind of little bit of a well read blog. Sort of. I was happy. I got comments. We interacted. I read ya'll's blogs. It was a fun little community. 

But I do not dare walk away because this is where I have documented our lives and especially our homeschool for the last what? 6 years? 

Speaking of which, it scares me to think that Blogger could just go away one day and bye-bye blog. I know you can get blog books made (cha ching!). I know you can self-host. (ack!) What should I do to ensure that I have these memories? Start printing? Suggestions?

____________________________________

We have been doing summer school three times a week. We are mainly doing math and language arts. Really we're just trying to get a jump start on the things that fell through the cracks last year. And keep going with math, which is never-ending. The girls have complained a little, but even they realize that an hour or 2 three times a week is not a big deal.

But we are oh so excited about next year! I've been planning and planning. I've had to make myself stop last week. I will resume getting ready for next year when we return from....

our first ever family vacation!!!

Yes folks, I am so excited! Wednesday is our 20th anniversary and so soon we are loading up the family and taking off on a road trip for a week. S has NEVER taken a whole week off of work to my knowledge. So I'm spending my time until then getting the house in order (I even tackled the inside of Little Bit and Bee's closet) and packing, etc. Then when we return, I will resume next year's school planning. 

Nothing but fun in my future! (I love planning.) 

We have had a little bit of fun this summer. I was kind of thinking how we hadn't done many fun things for the bigger girls but I looked back at our calendar and realized we had done some things. It would be better if we had other people to go do things with. Sister came over with her girls once and we all went to the splash pad. Those kind of things are much more fun with friends (or cousins). Our church had a swim party on the 4th of July. That was fun. Um.....

Well, we're going on vacation so there's always that!!

Gee whiz. Mama needs to get out more! It's raining this week so swimming is out. We're going to the library today but that really doesn't hold the promise it did when they were little. What do you do with big kids in the hot summer? Maybe other people stay at home a lot too. Maybe Facebook just makes it look like everyone else is out having fun except us. Maybe. 

OK. Some pictures to share:

My parents have been going to the mall to walk early every morning. We joined them one morning but there are WAY too many of these stupid things all around the mall. There was a lot of crying until we finally stopped. The mall is dead to me. 

Splash pad.

Mrs. Carrie had an American Girl party to watch the new Saige movie. 

Sweetheart got rid of her toys this summer.

The girls have helped a lot with Bee. It's getting harder. She's big!

We tried Kool-aid dye.

Summer School Formerly Known as Boot Camp

I was so proud of my idea for the camo themed boot camp this summer. All I was implying was that we were going to cram a bunch of drill into a concentrated amount of time. Thus, boot camp.

So at Target's dollar spot I found little rolls of camo duct tape! Perfect!! I mean, I can't justify spending money on decoration for summer school. I was going to duct tape their binders and find some camo pencils, etc.

But when we opened that duct tape oh my word!! It stank like anything. You know what it smelled like? When a place has new commercial carpet. It was SO bad. It smelled up the whole house. I kept thinking it would air out but after we threw it away you could still smell it every time someone opened the trash.

Humph. Oh well. I'll think of something. Something less smelly.

So here are some of the things I have planned for this summer. I'm trying to make it as fun as possible and not so much like the regular school year.

1. All About Spelling
We didn't do well on spelling after Bee got mobile. We didn't have anywhere we could put the board where she couldn't get into it. So we lost a few months in the spring of doing spelling. There isn't any way to make this different, but we're going to finish their books.

2. Writing Strands
We are beginning this and since its a new program, and I really think Sweetheart will love the author's tone (he wrote it like he is speaking straight to them), I think she will enjoy it. Plus, at the end of some lessons he says, "Now, tell your parents you have a week off of writing" so she'll enjoy that!

3. Grammar/Art Journals
I noticed during the IOWA test that we took last month my girls are lacking in some grammar rule knowledge. So, we are going to learn the capitalization and punctuation rules (each according to their level). To do this in a fun way, I have a plan to use their Art Journals to learn these rules.

I'll have to show you pictures once we get going on this!

4. Other stuff
Little Bit is still growing as a reader. She just finished 3rd grade, but was using Sonlight's 2nd grade readers. There is a big jump from 2nd to 3rd grade (nearly everything is chapter books) so she needs a lot of reading practice over the summer. We're doing that through our library summer reading program, but there are other skills we can work on.
So I found some things on Pinterest like a cupcake matching game to learn contractions. No worksheets. Just some games and stuff. Plus some sight word work. Just things to strengthen her skills.

5. Mama and Me Journals
Want a sneaky way to get writing and reading practice in for your kids? I found these Mama and Me Journals on Pinterest as well. I made them this week for the girls and they both just loved the idea and were full of questions. I had surprised them by having them under their pillows one night. The instructions are for them to write in them and then leave them on my bed, where I'll write back the next day. It's nice and I think is really opening another line of communication for my 13 year old, where she sometimes wants to discuss things with me, but doesn't have a lot of private time with me. This is giving us the chance to talk about some things. Good stuff.

Those are my plans. We won't do every thing every day. But I have a lot of things to pull from and hopefully a lot of it doesn't feel like school.

And they also have math. All of this will occur on Tuesday through Thursday. We're off the other days!

I mean, it IS summer!

Even if I don't get to be drill sergeant.