Mommy Summer School

I've had loads of inquiries about summer school this year, so I'm setting out our schedule here. We have had a lot of camp this summer, first with 3 weeks of cerebral palsy camp for Alex and day camp for Izzy and then another week of lacrosse camp for both kids. During camp weeks, I don't worry about teaching anything. I just try to read with them at night. Now that camp is over and we have 4 straight weeks to be together, we have our summer school schedule worked out. This summer our theme is Greek Gods and Mythology. I purchased the student copy of Greek Gods through Calvert Education. Calvert is a private school in Baltimore that has a homeschool division. I find that my kids are ahead of their grade level by at least a year with the Calvert products, but you can give your kids an online test to see where they are. I jumped ahead to the 4th grade supplemental materials and purchased the Greek God curriculum. It's simple, clear and comes with fun pictures to color. During the first part of the summer, I read 2-3 stories aloud each day while the kids colored the gods from the stories. We discussed the stories and reviewed what we had read, talked about where we often see Greek Mythology (Harry Potter), and related some of the stories to our lives. Once we finished the book, we went back to review them and create our own gods. So, our Monday-Thursday goes: I. Greek Gods (our Greek Gods curriculum from Calvert supplemented with free videos, mostly from YouTube, about specific gods - on Mondays they design a poster about a favorite god, on Tuesdays they create a poster of a new god from their imagination, on Wednesday they are doing clay art where they make the gods out of clay and on Thursday, they finish up their projects and practice their presentations which they give on the weekend to their dad), II. Language Arts (various early reader books, rhyming books, poetry, etc--the kids read, write and draw about what they read, write in their journals, write down words they know or don't know, create their own poetry, etc), III. Math (from Singapore math, purchased online, mostly workbooks, or IXL online math with Kahn Academy to supplement) - then we take a big break to run, swim, etc. In the afternoon, we have a babysitter who is also a preschool teacher, who is teaching the last two lessons: IV. Values (straight from The Value Tree Summer School Series Volume I, which means they will cover 10 values this month, draw pictures and keep journals on their efforts to live a value-based life) and V. Art (mostly watercolors this summer). Fridays are called Science Fridays and they are all about math and science. I bought several science kits and we will work our way through these. Plus, we are listening to Brain On!, a free podcast for kids, about topics related to our science kits. I've adopted podcasts this summer and am in love with them! There are so many amazing podcasts out there. If your kids are older, and they love science, Science Fridays is awesome. I love listening to podcasts while running too! Great for entertaining kids in the car too, if you have long holiday drives. I love sharing Mommy School, so if you have questions, shoot me an email rather than a blog comment at: nickyschmidt@gmail.com.