Summer check-in

[Imahoot]

So how is your summer going with the children home from school? Is it living up to your expectations? What do you still have planned?

[LostnFound]

Our first month has sped by us. We have had a great summer. We have been eating dinner outside as much as possible. I make sure to buy paper products as to have no dishes. Yeah!! The kids spend most of the day in the sprinklers and getting the trampoline wet.

We are taking a trip with a few of the neighbors to Yellowstone and Bear Lake at the end of July. We are really excited about that. I also would like to go to Lagoon this year. There's our summer in a nutshell. How is everyone else's Summer going?

[Dia Minha]

We have been having a blast. We have met our goal of at least one field trip each week. We have visited the Tracey Aviary, Antelope Island, The Bean Museum, The Peoples and Cultures Museum, The Living Planet Aquaruim, and even went swimming at the Taylorsville outdoor pool. The places we are going next week are, Musuem of Natural History (to start our week long unit on frogs) and the zoo (MNH free on the first Monday of the month and the zoo is free on the first Thursday of the month with a Tracy Aviary pass). For the second week in July we are planning a trip to the Dinosaur Park in Ogden (also free on any weekday with a Tracy Aviary pass) to finish our unit on Dinosaurs. I'm looking forward to our family vacation in August where we will be in Seattle for a couple of days and then just outside of Oregon. We will have a field trip to see if we can find the Troll that lives under the bridge in Seattle and of course to visit the needle. Then, we have a day planned for the beach and a day to visit Mount St. Helens, which the kids are very excited about. Which reminds me I need to get our volcano books on hold.

We have a couple of busy weeks, spending several days in Salt Lake at Grandma's house visiting with our Oregon cousins and then our New Mexico cousins. The kids had a blast getting reaquainted and the sisters enjoyed it too.

We have been enjoying our grass and our two wading pools (one for me and the two little girls and one for the three big kids) in the backyard. Any day we are home you will find us in the back yard, kicking around the soccer ball or relaxing in the cool water. Even though we have fun on our adventures, the days we stay home and just relax and enjoy each others company are some of our best summer days.

The one thing that I set a goal in at the beginning of the summer that we haven't been to successful at is keeping up on math skills. We have been doing a lot of reading with our field trips and units, but haven't been so good working on our math. I guess I need to put the books and flash cards in the van and require a run through the flash cards or two pages in a workbook for every field trip and every trip to Grandma's house. Originally it was supposed to be a daily activity, but I'm thinking now maybe twice a week should be sufficient to keep up their skills.

I hope everyone else's summers are going just as grand. I can't wait to hear from the rest of you.

Dia

[5ft Diva]

Yellowstone, that sound like a blast! We went there a couple of years ago and loved it. Have fun there, LnF.

We've just been here and there. I've made sure the kids haven't been too bored by scheduling things they would like to do. They aren't reading as much as I'd like them to but then again, I'm not encouraging them to read too much. Son #2 doesn't care if he attends the end of the summer Reading Program BBQ so reading is probably not going to happen w/ him. My other boys are pretty good about reading and I'm a read-a-holic lately. I just can't seem to put my books down. Today I just scrambled the kids' rooms around and they are very excited to have new roommates. It'll be an adjustment but I think it's one we've all been looking forward to.

How about you, Ima? What have you been up to since school's been out?