Morphing into summer

All three children are playing quietly in their rooms. Go ahead, you can be impressed if you want. I won’t tell you that they’re in there because they had a massive fight, went all WWF and I walked in to find them screaming and crying and swinging bags of chips at one another, crumbs flying all over my freshly vaccumed carpet.

I’ll just let you go on thinking I’m raising angels.

So hey – got this summer time thing going on. With the pressure of school off my shoulders I have found myself inhaling for the first time in…nine months. NINE MONTHS. And it’s glorious, food fights and all. But there’s got to be some structure or me?

Ima hafta lose my mind.

Our home school schedule consisted of lessons beginning around 9:00 and finishing around 2:00 every day. Just because we are officially on summer break doesn’t mean that all learning stops, though. Every summer, even when Sloan went to public school, I instituted a one hour long “learning time” each morning. I like to do this just to watch them whine and complain.

It’s super fun.

So learning time is back. From 9:00-10:00 each morning the kids are working on reading, math, spelling or Russian. By the time we finish up those lessons, clean up around the house and have a minimum of two fights, it’s already lunch time!

BAM! No lazy summer days here. No siree.

The pool is providing great afternoon entertainment as are neighborhood friends and a bit of TV, because what’s summer without a teeny bit of laziness, yes?

I’ve ordered a ton of books and we will be heading to the library periodically as well. We have offered the two older kids a bribe an incentive to get them reading over the summer. For every book they finish, we will pay them a dollar. Sloan gets two dollars if he reads longer chapter books (at least fourth grade reading level or higher) and I’ve have offered him 5 dollars if he will read an entire book in Russian from front to back.

I did not think about the work all this would be for me as I now have to translate said Russian book to help him with comprehension and I have to read the more advanced books to make sure he is comprehending those as well. That kinda blows because while I want them active and busy, I myself had envisioned a nice, relaxing summer with my feet kicked up beside the pool and a cold iced tea in my hand.

*snort*

Clearly I am delusional.

So what about you? How do you keep your kids from driving you crazy active during these summer months?

I’m the Cruelest Mom Ever but Look at the Awesome Pics I Took of this Caterpillar, Yo!

Sometimes coming up with clever titles is just too much, you know?

It’s spring break ’round these parts. Well – it’s spring break for the public schools. My kids, however, are being forced to do school this week because I relish in torturing them.

Muahahahahahahaha…

Seriously. you’d think I was standing over them with a bowl of cold gruel and a whip barking “What’s the sum of 5+7!” They are in the dungeon of learning, folks. You should feel sorry for them.

In a lame attempt to garner a few meager cool points, I’m offering a lot of breaks and we’re starting an hour later than usualy each morning. This gives them ample opporunity to enjoy the awesome that is Florida spring weather and hunt lizards and caterpillars to their little hearts content.

And speaking of caterpillars, check out these photos we got today of the creeper we affectionately (and completely unoriginally) named “Spikey.”

So, in celebration of my lack of awesome, please tell me – what did you do today that was awesome?

Playin’ Hooky

 

February in Florida is divine.

So much so that I do believe we’re going to play hooky today and spend some time at the beach, because really…what good is home schooling in Florida if you can’t dip your toes in the ocean on a school day now and then, right?

Besides, we learned multiplication (Sloan), subtraction (Tia) and sentence diagramming (everyone) this week. I think we’ve earned a break, yes?

Happy weekending everyone!