heart to heart blog

Even though Jagger had a little trouble in preschool this year, he wasn’t sentenced to summer school as a punishment – we thought it would be a good way to keep the smarts from oozing out of his brain all summer long. Oh yeah, and B would be able to attend as well- as long as she could keep from being the class clown too often.

The hubs and I set to work last month in putting together one incredible summer school schedule. Alright- it’s not that great, but we did put something in writing and that my friend, was a good first step in the right direction.

As you can see by the photo, we included the following: (to be done on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays only)
Circle Time – this was similar to what they do in school. We would go over the day of the week, the date, the month and the weather. We also took to learning our address & phone number this summer which we included in our circle time activities.

Music Time – or “School of Rock” as my husband named it. My husband plays the guitar so he wanted to infuse his love of music into them. For the last week the kids have been obsessed with “Livin’ la vida loca” on the keyboard’s autoplay. My son is so into this song, if I taped him and showed it to his friends when he was 16, I was be disowned as his mother.

B 1 on 1 Time – B still needs to learn some of the basics like the Alphabet, letter & number recognition, counting, etc. We really need to do this alone wither her because Jagger is very quick to “help” with the answers.

Activity Time – Activity time is intended to be an organized activity – ideally one related to that week’s “theme.” DH has done everything from evaporating water, catching wind, making “ocean” water (just add salt!) and even a trip to the grocery store. Sometime’s it’s as simple as sidewalk chalking the planets in the driveway.

Lunch Time

Quiet Time/Reading Time – We felt it was important to schedule time to read books. We already read books all the time in the evenings & always at bedtime but we wanted to make a concentrated effort on teaching the kids to read on their own. DH has his own book that he reads too. (the truth is we’re hoping right after lunch that they fall asleep with their noses in a book but that hasn’t been too fruitful)

Jagger 1 on 1 Time – Similar to B, Jagger needs his own time to be challenged. We try to get Jagger to practice his letter writing, his letter sounds, sequences & patterns, starting to read, etc. He’s a sharp little boy & we want to make sure the summer doesn’t dull him

Every other Saturday we go to the library to get books out for the next two weeks. The kids decide the topics they want to learn about and we get books out related to those topics. Here are the weekly themes we’ve had so far:
- Weather
- Planets
- Bugs
- Where does food come from?
- Spanish
- The Ocean

My favorite thing my husband did during the “Where does food come from” week was go to the grocery store and ask the store manager if he could take a tour with the kids. The manager happily obliged and the kids got a private tour of the bakery, the deli, the freezer, the dairy case and the warehouse. My husband said it was really cool. The kids loved the pallet jack that moved stuff from one place to the next and loved the deli slicer that spun “super fast.” Thank you Giant in Exton!

We also start our day by watching Word Girl on PBS where every show features a new word. The show is cute and the word’s meaning is introduced in relatable and fun context. We then put it on a chart and try to use it during the day. It’s been a great way to introduce new vocabulary words like astonished, crest-fallen, arrogant, complicated and more.

And of course, some weeks are better than others and some lessons stick while some ooze right out of their ears just as I thought, but it’s been fun and it’s given us more focus so the days don’t turn into 6 hours or scootering, swimming and TV watching- that’s what the weekends are for!