For our history text, we use Story of the World - we're in Volume 1 (ancient history). Sunny loves the hands-on projects and has been making a number of them. Everyone got involved with making a "model" of the Nile River, with the Fertile Crescent represented in the triangle area at the top. They put in grass seed to flood the Nile on occasion and see if it will grow.
The garden is going gang-busters. This is really Dad's project, but the rest of us help with weeding and watering. And we're all enjoying the results! Next year, the girls will each have their own area to care for - that was the plan for this year but it didn't happen. Oops. Project-possessive parents not letting the kids help is not really teaching, is it.
We learned that there are free jazz concerts at Bushnell Park in Hartford on Monday nights during the summer, so we decided to enjoy a couple of them. Sunny has recently learned from Aunt T how to finger-knit, and she took her yarn to one of the concerts. Magnolia and Birdie, and a lot of the other kids, got in some exercise with dancing.
This is the big one for this summer - SWIMMING. I am, quite frankly, so tired of being paranoid any time we go near a body of water due to my children not knowing how to swim. So this year, we choked down the cost of a pass to our city pool (it's a good facility but expensive), and recruited a teenager from church to teach the older 3 swim lessons. She worked with Sunny one-on-one, and she's THIS CLOSE to being able to go in the deep end by herself. Unfortunately, the pool season will close before she gets there, but next year, she should get it really quick! Posy and Birdie had a combined lesson. Posy shocked me - I thought she would be totally afraid of the water and take forever to get through that, but by the end of the first lesson, she was dunking herself and spending more time under the water than on top of it. On the other hand, it took until lesson #7 for Birdie to put her head under the water. Both still need work, and neither can get very far with actually swimming yet. But I'm satisfied with the progress all 3 of them have made - they had 12 lessons, plus family times at the pool since we had the pass. I'm optimistic that all 3 will be fully swimming next summer with a bit more work.
Magnolia and Azalea didn't have lessons this year - they're only 3 and 2. AC and I just played with them ourselves so they would get comfortable in the water. This was really the first year they've been in a pool regularly, since we didn't get the pass last year. Maybe next year for them.
And we've even had another session of Outside Science, finally! We tried to build a water wall, where we pour the water in the top bottle and it works its way down. Taping the tubing and water bottles together didn't hold, so we still have some work to do. The kids also built tin foil boats and put rocks in them to see how well they'd float.
Lots of water. Lots of outside. Lots of hands-on. It's been a good summer!
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