Summer School

We pretty much school year-round, since it just seems to work better that way. We take a week off here and there, but long periods off, like when I have a baby, just seem to throw things into disarray, so we try not to do that too often. As an aside from that thought, lots of parents don't like summer vacation because their kids are always saying they're bored, but for us, if we keep in the same routine we've been in all along, then they have plenty of free time in the afternoons, and they really enjoy it because they know they could be inside doing more schoolwork. Routine is my friend! That said, we do lighter stuff over the summer, and with this trip to Colorado looming ahead, we will certainly be taking some time off of our formal studies. Right now, Nathan just finished his achievement testing. Over the next few weeks, I'm planning on doing a little unit on classical music using Story of the Orchestra as a kind of base. Since getting Beethoven's Wig (a CD where they have put words to famous classical pieces--it is so fun), the boys have been pretty interested in classical music, so I figured it would be a good time. For science, we're busy with our "deck garden", which is coming along nicely. Bob made an impressive pole structure for our beans the other day. We also have a creek not too far from our house, along a little walking path, so I imagine we'll spend plenty of time down there observing. In math, everyone will just continue where they are--Nathan is almost through with Saxon 3, and Luke is almost halfway through Saxon 2. I still haven't decided what Nathan will be doing next. I guess I'd better get on that! We're only halfway through Story of the World 2 (Middle Ages) , so we'll keep plowing on there too. I think we take too much time reading the extra literature and history suggestions in the activity guide! Ah well, there's no hurry. One fun thing we're planning to do is build a castle out of boxes and other stuff like that. It was in the the March issue of Family Fun, and it looks like a really fun project. Nathan loves stuff like that, and he's been collecting the various parts since we got the magazine! We're also planning on having a "medieval feast" party maybe in July. Since we don't really have birthday parties with lots of other people, this will kind of be our one big celebration where we invite kids over. For Latin, we're going to do a fun thing over the summer. It's called Minimus, and it combines Latin language instruction with Roman history in a cartoon-like format. It looks fun, and I think it will be a nice break while helping the boys retain what they learned from Prima Latina. Then in the fall, we'll start Latin Christiana. We probably won't do much formal grammer this summer, but I am planning on continuing to work with Nathan on his abominable spelling! So that will give you a little summary of our summer school plans!