Schools around here are all on summer break, for us not much has changed though. We do “school” through the summer, but it doesn’t really look like “school”. Here are a few of the things we have done over the last couple months (I had originally started writing this at the end of May but it’s already July now!)
My mom and step-dad went on a trip to New Mexico/Arizona about two months ago and that sparked an interest in the cactus, particularly in my oldest son. When they got back from the trip my mom brought over a book called Cactus Hotel and the kids all wrote or drew a picture (or both) about what they learned from it. Since then any time we come across a picture of a cactus they have to point it out.
Something that was really cool for me (and the kids, of course) is that we got to go to a castle. It’s called Chateau Laroche, around here it is called the Loveland Castle. It was neat learning the history of how a guy built it himself, sort of as a replica of medieval castles in France, and about knighthood, etc. The kids all thought it was neat and wished they could have explored the locked areas! I had written a paper about Chateau Laroche when I was in school so the kids got to read that and see pictures that my mom had given me that she took of the castle from over 30 years ago. That inspired them to paint pictures of castles, a few to write their own papers, and we also found a nice book of pictures/descriptions of castles from Britain and Ireland.
We have been visited several local parks as well as doing our neighborhood nature walk thing we do. When we go do this stuff, especially hikes, I try to make sure we can take our time, we can walk slow and notice the different plants, interesting scenery, etc. We usually have things we want to come home and look up, like “what does poison ivy look like?”/“what is that bird called?”/“what type of butterfly is that?”
Sometimes I feel emotional about just how fast time seems to be going, BUT it is fun how the kids are all getting older (besides the baby, who is usually happy to go along for the adventures as long as he’s strapped to me!). They are all big enough to do things like hikes that a few years ago we couldn't really do when we had several young kids at once, even my 5 year old can walk over 2 1/2 miles without much complaint, she’s use to having to keep up with all her older siblings! (even when we got lost in the woods for over an hour on a hike, she complained less than some of the older ones hahaha!)
Baby is waking up so I will save the rest of what we've been doing for another post!
