We've started Fun School around here. A couple weeks ago, Gavin and I got started on some little things just to keep some skills fresh over the summer. We're not doing it every single day, and I'm not making him sit for hours doing 'school' stuff. The main reason I wanted to do this is because I saw how far his writing (in particular) came through the school year, and I wanted to be sure to keep practicing it so that he wouldn't lose those skills.
I made him a calendar folder and we are doing a pattern each month, tracking the weather, and doing a quick number activity using the 100s chart. We don't do the calendar every morning, so we just play catch up on the days that we do.
I'm not a huge workbook fan, but Gavin loved these when we saw them at Sam's, so I grabbed them and he loves to trace the different shapes, etc. It's helping him with his pencil grip and his tension, both things that Miss Linda wanted him to work on this summer.
I took him to the store and let him pick out a notebook to use this summer {he picked Spiderman} and we're just doing some little things in it to practice his writing. Below he picked a food he liked and drew a picture of it (not seen here) and we wrote a sentence together.
I'm not planning to create every 'lesson' we do on my own...there are way too many wonderful resources out there for that. One of which is a homeschool blog that I love - Counting Coconuts. She uploaded an entire Angry Birds mini-unit and I had to use some of her ideas. Yesterday, we spent an hour launching Angry Birds across the living room, measuring how far they went, and writing the numbers. He cut the pictures out himself (another skill he needs practice with) and glued them into notebook before adding the correct number next to the bird. We did 8 different ones (and if it were up to him, we probably would have launched all 38 Angry Birds that he has).
The last thing we've done over the past couple of weeks is make a word wall (or as Gavin calls it, our Word Doors, since the words aren't on a wall at all). He's showing signs of wanting to read and I'm taking advantage of it. He LOVES reading these words and is so proud of himself when he does. We started with the names of our family and are adding words slowly from books that we're reading together. I'm excited to see the wall grow this summer.
