The Lazy Days of Summer

This summer we're doing "school light" - reading, math and art. For reading we're using the 3rd grade level Pathway readers. I really enjoy these. I'm not sure how much my daughter does, but she is liking it better than All Things Even Frisky - Abeka's summer reader. My daughter has trouble with relationship conflict in a story, and All Things Even Frisky starts out with relationship conflict.

Math is just continuing Math-U-See's Beta book. We're on lesson 23 now. I think my daughter is getting the concepts just fine. Sometimes I wish my daughter would work faster, but that's okay. I think we're even going to bring math with us on vacation, so we can get done before we start this fall.

For art we are going through Drawing With Children, by Mona Brooks. It has been good so far. I like the way she teaches us to look for the shapes of things. I found some lesson plans on the MFWFamilies yahoo group, and have been using those. We shoot for 3 days a week, but that doesn't always happen.

It has been hard to come up with a schedule for the summer. I have lots of little projects (and some big projects) I want to get done. And, I want the kids to have plenty of free time to play. But, I'm having a real hard time sticking to any schedule. Plus, we've not been doing much in the way of fun things. I think I'm kind of a home body, and unless someone invites us, I often don't take the initiative for a fun thing. The other thing I'm seeing, though, is the kids do so much better with some structure as far as not arguing and fighting as much.

Some of my summer projects: put my Exploring Countries and Cultures lesson plans into Home School Tracker Plus (HST+); make triangle math fact cards for multiplication and division; teach my daughter how to clean her room; work on chore training with all the children. I'm about half-way through the first one. But, beyond that I've been stuck in trying to help the kids get along when they play. I get interrupted so much some days, that I don't even feel like trying to get anything done. Just doing laundry, keeping the house clean, and the small amount of school we do each day is taking so much time because I have to keep stopping to work on things with the kids.

Maybe someday I'll find a way to get it all done! But, I don't think it's going to be this summer.