Weekly Wrap-up ~ Summer Week 1

We completed our first week of Summer School this past week.

We take a more relaxed approach to school in the months of June and July. From 10:00 a.m. until noonish we tackle some actual school work reviewing concepts, learning new ones, and doing some reading. Then in the afternoons we relax, go swimming, rest to prepare for evening softball, etc.

While at Hastings last weekend Brynne saw the Summer Bridge series of books and asked if we could buy one for her and Eli to use this summer. (She is a total homeschool kid.) I was happy to oblige so purchased the 6-7 grade bridge edition.

Each day the kids start out with a front and back worksheet from the Summer Bridge book. Just this week they covered these topics:

• Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division review
• Rewriting expressions using exponents and evaluating
• Equivalent fractions
• Greatest Common Factors
• Stressed syllables and definition look-up in dictionary
• Complete, fragmented, and run-on sentences
• Editing for capitalization and punctuation errors
• Similes, metaphors, hyperboles, personification
• Prefixes and suffixes
• Root word definitions
• Creative writing
• Scientific method
• Societal needs and government program responses
• Plate tectonics
• Energy conservation (with reading comprehension)

Whoa! That's a lot of topics! I was really pleased with the variety of concepts they covered this week.

After they complete Summer Bridge we sit together to read aloud. Right now we are reading the second book in the Mr. Lemencello series by Chris Grabenstein. We read Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library last summer and absolutely loved it! So when we saw the new release Mr. Lemoncello's Library Olympics the kids asked that it be our first book of the summer. We read half of it this week, Chapters 1-21, and it has not disappointed. These are great books for tweenagers, especially in the summer and I  highly recommend them!

We finish our school day with some personal reading time. Brynne is back into the Warrior Cats series and is currently finishing Outcast. Eli is about to finish Gregor the Overlander. They each have the next books in those series ready to go early this next week.

Brynne had softball practice this week and two softball games. They won both of their games. It is so fun to watch her improve every game. Both games she hit good singles that turned into home runs because of overthrown errors by the other team. She has also made some good fielding plays at second base and caught some pop flies. Softball is a family affair as I am "Dugout Mom", Collin is one of her coaches, and Kyndal is the team's scorekeeper. We have a lot of fun!

Eli is still attending speech therapy one afternoon a week for his stuttering and for tongue thrust issues. He is making excellent progress! Last weekend he played in his first-ever video game tournament. He played the game Super Smash Bros. on the WiiU with 12 other competitors. Most of the competitors were adult men, but there were three total boys under the age of 13. Eli was very nervous but ended up placing 5th of out the 12 overall and then 1st out of the under 13 category. He won a $5 Hastings gift card and a load of confidence. It was a lot of fun!

Otherwise this week was full of doctor appointments, errands, and relaxing. My mom, Kyndal and I went to a big subdivision garage sale yesterday. We got some goodies! Four of Dawson's friends from Oklahoma are here visiting, including his girlfriend Alyssa, so our house is full! In fact, I am typing this on the back porch because there are man children sleeping on every comfortable surface in our house. Rick and I are planning to get out in the heat today and ride our bikes on the Katy Trail.

Tomorrow our whole family and all of the friends are going to Kansas City to go Great Wolf Lodge for a night to celebrate Brynne's 11th birthday that is coming up in August. We found a great Groupon so are celebrating her birthday early this year.

We have started logging our school hours for the 2016-2017 school year. These summer school hours are what allow us to take our bigger breaks during the school year.

Completed: 15.25 hours with 4.75 hours outside of home