For my family, it is officially summer. Why? Because Baby Girl just graduated out of the 2/3 year old class of her pre-school and to me that means it is summer. ….Not to mention the temps have been over 90 here for like three days and I’m about to melt.
Maddie and her teacher, Miss Jenny
So, no school + hot weather = SUMMER!!
Now, my kids really aren’t old enough to feel the boredom that is often associated with summer and the lack of 8 hours of schooling, but the We Are That Family blog is having their summer boredom buster WFMW and I thought I’d add my thoughts for those who do have kids who have that nagging “Moooommmmm! I’m boooooorrrreeddddddd!!!!” syndrome.
My personal goal is to walk out of summer with some added knowledge in my kids’ heads. Granted, at ages just-turned-three and almost-turned-four, just about anything we do gives my kids additional knowledge, but my main goal is to do something that has some structure to it so that it prepares my kids for what our house is going to be like come September. So, here is my plan.
Each week of the summer will have a theme. I’m totally stealing themes that I used to use way back in the day when I was the coordinator of a kids’ day camp. Some fun themes are:
- The Beach
- Space
- Animals
- Bugs
- Holidays
- Sports
- Dinosaurs
- Water
- Circus
I’ll be using the Workbox System. Erica over at Confessions of a Homeschooler explains how she uses the Workbox System. Each drawer of the box tower will have an activity that will go with the week’s theme. For instance, if the week’s theme is animals, some activities could include finding an animal for each letter of the alphabet (to work on letter recognition for my younger 3 year old and letter sounds for my older one), a book about animals, a sticker worksheet about animals, an animal scavenger hunt, some letter writing practice, some counting practice and number recognition, etc. Then sometime through out the week, we’d take a day away from home and go somewhere to see some animals….maybe a small petting zoo or a friend’s farm.
It’s going to be alot of planning to keep this up for the summer, but I think it’s going to be alot of fun. In just a couple of weeks we will be on vacation at the beach…can you guess that the theme is going to be that week??? Yes, I am doing this while we are on vacation. I remember being bored sometimes while on vacation as a child.
Good luck with your bored-free summer!!
