summer plans

I spent the morning working on our summer schedule and plans.  I had a bunch of thoughts floating around in my head about what I wanted to do this summer, which ways I wanted the summer to be a continuation of our normal routines, and which ways I wanted it to be different.  I finally sorted all those thoughts out on paper, and I'm excited!  I think we'll really enjoy the next few months!

Link to my schedule in Google Docs in case it's too hard to read here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PS5eNxAdCAQo2z51poCa38G2KeTDrg_l-fdlu8-mQ7g/edit?usp=sharing

As you can see, our schedule is pretty loose.  No times are listed for anything, just suggestions of what activities to do on the different days.  David is off every other Friday, so the Friday plans are for those when he's at work.  When he's off, it counts as "weekend".

I wanted to take a break from our core homeschool curriculum, Five in a Row, mostly so that I could have a break in planning.  I want to continue with reading (phonics), handwriting, and math, because all of my kids are in a place where they are making major strides in those subjects and taking significant time off could cause big set-backs.  I wanted to hit each of the 3Rs at least 3x a week.  I decided to plan for 2 subjects a day, rotating.  Our school time should be doable in 30-60 minutes total, which should make it easy to fit in on any day, even when we have something else planned later in the morning.

Our MOPs group will have play dates at the park every Thursday in June and July.  Those are on the schedule.  I want to make a weekly trip to the library to check out books on some theme that interests the kids.  We haven't made a "library theme list" yet, but we will.  I think next weeks's theme will be bugs and bug collections.  Hazel has been asking a lot about that.

Other than that, I wanted us to have a weekly craft day, where we could do a craft on the theme of our library books, or not, whatever.  And I wanted us to have "fun days"--days where we chose something from our Summer Fun list to do.  We brainstormed a Summer Fun list at lunch today.  I thought they'd have more ideas, but it took a lot of suggestion.  Most of the list is outings (like the aquarium and eating snoballs), but some are backyard (sprinklers, gardening).  Some we'll do more than once, I'm sure.  Others will be added over the course of the summer as ideas strike.

Our music class is over after tomorrow, until the fall.  We're going to add swim school on Tuesdays in place of music.  So we'll have that two afternoons a week.  We're adding a family game night, which will be new for us.  Hopefully that's fun.  And it just occurred to me that I didn't include speech therapy for Jono on Wednesday afternoons.  I guess I should make sure we're continuing that through the summer!

But that's the plan! If you're local, I'm sure I'll be posting a lot of "We're going to ____, come with us!" on Facebook on our Summer Fun list days.  So, please do!