Every year we typically look forward to summer break. We take several months off and have pretty much no structure to our day. Unfortunately, when it comes time to get back into a groove it's met with much resistance and can take weeks to reestablish. With my first grader quickly moving through her studies at a break-neck pace and my third grader not far behind her, summer break will be upon us in a matter of weeks. So, this year I'm devising a plan to "keep our groove on" and still have a bit of "down time".
Since my four year old isn't catching onto reading as quickly as the older two, she is going to need some focused attention over the summer to get her up to speed for 5K this fall. I decided that our traditional approach wasn't working too well for her so we are going with Hooked on Phonics for kindergarten as something different (and hopefully fun) to do this summer. I plan to include my three year old on this just to give her more exposure to letters and sounds.
I needed something a little more independent for my older two so I could work more with the younger two, so I've decided that they will do keyboarding (learning to type correctly) and Spanish this summer. These are two things we rarely have time for during the year so I thought that the summer would be the perfect time for this. I'm going with The Typing Instructor program for Keyboarding and Rosetta Stone for Spanish. I was considering Rosetta Stone back in 2006 but couldn't justify the cost....then we ended up on our wild adventure, life turned upside-down and it's a good thing I didn't purchase it back then. I will be going through the Spanish program also in my "free-time" so this is helping me justify the cost a bit more.
In addition to all of this, we will be reading The Bridge to Terabithia together and going through the Meet the Masters art program. I'm excited about the summer and I think the kids are too. I'm hoping it will feel enough like school to maintain some order but yet feel enough like summer that they don't get burned out.