Summer Break is Here!

Summer break is finally here! Not even my first grader could rival my enthusiasm for the last day of school these past weeks. I am thrilled. I have my boys all day long! And while that almost sounds like something exhausting (it probably will be in August!) for right now, mid-June, I am excited.

The best part is that there are no school projects. We will still read and write and work on math but in so-subtle-they-won’t-even-know-they-are-learning ways. Like sock addition and subtraction, write what we need from the grocery, how many steps to the garbage can, and the “who wants to read to your brother while he sits on the toilet” game. NO!.....those are not chores they are family favorites! What we won’t do are school projects and busy work.

Every week L would come home with a word search with 19 or 20, 4-5 letter, words to be found in a letter square that was 10x10. Seriously?! Some letters would get used 3 times. Then there were the tricky ones like “knight” and “night”…. And he’s in the first grade, eventually I realized that he wasn’t even really learning his spelling words this way and started showing him where the words were…if I could find them!

In the last weeks of school, L had to make a diorama. I was not happy. Cover the box with paper, decorate, cut, arrange, paste, hang….it sounded like a lot of work…for me. But once he started and was excited about it, it was fun for me too. I hope I learned a lesson. I’ll let you know when second grade starts.

So what are we doing this summer besides chores learning? We are going to the pool. We are going in our long-sleeve UV protection shirts and slathered in sun screen. We are going to go early to get one of the few shady spots, we are going to play hard in the pool, and come home with that pleasant tired feeling (which on some days will be grumpy-why-did-we-have-to-leave-the-pool-tired, instead).

We will also be taking a trip to “The Farm”. In the eyes of my boys there is only 1, they are city-kids after all! This year our vacation, to my parents house, will coincide with not only kids (baby goats) and kittens, but also puppies and my birthday (so Mom, no gifts, just my favorite meal and strawberry shortcake and under no circumstances should there be candles…or whatever you had planned).

What I am looking forward to most in this summer, is feeling unhurried. I don’t want to rush anything. I don’t want to rush out of the door, or rush them to bed, I don’t want to rush any of this time I have with them. September will come too soon and with it… school and the words “hurry up!”