Summer Break

I am looking forward to summer break. Really. It's hard to keep from dancing when I think about it. The only time I have been more excited about summer break was the year I got married. Our wedding was the week after finals.

My kids are not doing math lessons this summer.  They will probably forget everything they know. I don't care. We will learn it again next year.

I want to paint walls and furniture, build shelves, organize bedrooms, clean out flower beds, have a yard sale, finish building the tree house, and do the obligatory summertime traveling.

I want the kids to explore every inch of our nine acres, break in the tree house, fish in the pond, ride bikes, help me clean out flower beds, build gigantic Lego projects, and read lots of books.

Since I can't ever seem to give up academics completely, I do plan to have the boys practice keyboarding (some sites I pinned ) and write some book reports. Thing2's reports will only be a sentence or two, but I want Thing1 to practice summarizing stories this summer. To keep it nice and simple, I think we will use some forms I found on Busy Teacher's Cafe. I created a spreadsheet (I know, I'm a nerd) of books I want them to read and assigned points to each book. For simplicity, I just used AR points and added a bonus if the book is considered more than one year above their levels. If they read the book and write a report on it, they get the points. They can use the points they accumulate to buy books of their own.

A snip from Thing2's list

23 out of 62 suggestions for Thing1. They range from half a point for Hill of Fire to 32 points for The Hobbit.
I am curious to see which books he chooses to tackle.

I showed the list to them tonight, and they begged to start it now. I told them to wait until May 16, then I downloaded a new Audible book to tide them over. Did I mention I am excited about May 16? Now the boys are, too.