Weekly Wrap-up ~ Summer Weeks 7 and 8 and Lake School

As will happen regularly, especially in the summer months, the last three weeks have been crazy and school has had to be adjusted.

Two weeks ago was pretty much a bust in regard to formal schooling as I spent a couple of late nights at the hospital with Kyndal and her contractions and Dawson and his broken collarbone. We did do some organized schooling on Monday, and on Tuesday when I went to pick Kyndal up from her first of two hospital visits the kids did some assigned work by themselves. But that was it for the week.

The next week I had to take Dawson to an orthopedic surgeon for a follow-up on Monday, so I gave the kids the day off from school. But we did pull it together for full days of schoolwork on Tuesday through Friday.

This past Monday we went on our annual trip to the lake with our friends from Oklahoma. Megan and I spent the week relaxing, sipping wine, snacking, reading, and lesson planning for this upcoming school year.

The kids spend their time swimming, reading, playing games, and enjoying time with friends. Since boredom does creep into a small lake house, I always like to bring a thematic lesson for the kids to work on here and there. We call it Lake School. And this year it had everything to do with the Olympics. We did several cross-curricular activities and art projects. You can check out my Olympics Pinterest Board to see all of the fun things we did. Following are a few photos from our fun week.

Working on American Flag pastels from Hodgepodge Mom.

Olympian sculptures

STEM Olympic games

Tangerine Olympic cookies

Plotting coordinates

Math puzzles

Friends for life

Coordinates complete.

Summer school is now complete. This summer we logged a total of 141.5 hours with 54 of those hours being completed outside the home. (This actually matters in Missouri.)

We had planned to take off the entire month of August and start our fall semester on August 29th. But with the upcoming birth of our grandson and some other weeks we need to take off later in the year (and a promise of a 6-week Christmas break), I convinced the kids to let us start our new school year on August 15th. Carl Azuz from CNN Student News helped me seal the deal since he is starting this year's broadcasts on the 15th. They figure if school is good enough for Carl, it's good enough for them!!

This has been a really great summer. It has flown by, like it always does. But we have some cool lessons planned for this upcoming school year and I'm looking forward to all we will be learning.

I also have a themed day planned for the First Day of School. I always do that as a way to have a little fun on the first day back. I'll give you a hint: Our first day of school will be COOL!