May. 25, 2008 - school is finished
We wrapped up our schoolwork on Friday. I try to make our last day of school on Emmy Day. This is a special day we celebrate for our daughter who was born on Dec 23. We get her gifts and make a cake. Only this year we made brownies. Part of the present is the announcement that school is over for the summer. There is always much rejoicing at that, I can tell you. So Emmy Day is "our" holiday--part birthday, part last day of school--100% celebration.
Even though Emmy Day is our last day of school, I'm making plans to do some science, art and Amer.History during the summer months. I realized that as we have focused on World History, the children haven't had a clue as to what the Civil War was. I feel like I had too much American History growing up; in fact, it felt as if all the teachers were in some kind of conspiracy to NEVER talk about history that wasn't Amer.History. I went too far. Now when we visit a historic site such as a battlefield, the children seem so uninterested b/c they haven't a clue about American History. Well, I figured that we have 8 Mondays in the summer available to work on American History. I picked up an Amer. History Encyclopedia from the library and divided the time line until the 1900s (we'll have to do later than that next summer :). I have a few other books to use with it. I plan to take the whole day on Monday to talk about that period, read bios, look at pictures, or whatever can be done. I think it will work, but it will be an experiment on my part.
Art will be on Wednesdays. I plan to do about 3 or 4 lessons during the day using different forms (paint, drawing, markers, etc.). I'm thinking about doing science lessons on Tuesdays or Thursdays. I'm thinking about doing 2 or 3 lessons in the day and if we don't have the materials, we'll go out and get them and come back and finish the lessons. Science we never got to during the school year because of math and reading. I always meant to. In fact, I mean to do all this during the summer and who knows if it will really happen. Funny thing is, my son loves science and always "plays" science projects and knows a lot from the little bitty science Encyclopedia he has. He knows more on his own than anything I've done.
Well, I hope all these plans work out.
