Next week I will be posting all our summer learning plans. To say I am excited would be an understatement. I think we have hit upon a fantastic summer idea, one that won’t cost too much and will build multiple skills in the children and their parents.
The Idea
I was looking for something that wouldn’t include me, but anyone who knows me would know that would be a near impossibility. And it was. I also needed an idea that wouldn’t cost a lot of money and it was while looking through my school resources bought over the years I came across all of these:
It was this which sparked an excitement which has reached rather large proportions. And yes I know this probably is not normal or even healthy but darn it’s fun!! From this we put together a summer adventure box. The idea of these boxes is that they contain everything required for the children to go on the journey of a life time without necessarily leaving their home. Last year we visited the Incas and Mayans, this year we’ll be visiting Laura Ingalls and her family…in fact the children will become them for 10 weeks!
We are going to spend A Summer of Little House Living!
The Concept
I will expand on this next week, but basically, we are going to spend the whole summer going through the Little House on the Prairie books, and extracting as much learning from each book as possible. This will not essentially be academic work, more building skills, but I do have an idea for writing which has got all three (yes, even T11) excited. I have also devised a big project incorporating the building of the skills we wish to learn. It might be that we are simply a very easily pleased family…..or it could be that the summer plans truly are a treasure.
We have five children, usefully one is a boy the rest are girls. The little house books are based on a father, mother and their three girls. Numerically this is perfect. T11 is just a tad too old to be taking part in any serious pretend play, although I’m sure he will good-naturedly join in from time to time, but the four girls are at an ideal age. The younger two love getting dressed up and playing at different characters and the older ones have always enjoyed it and haven’t yet grown out of it.
The children will dress up, act out, cook recipes, make homemade bits and bobs and generally replicate anything they can from the series of books and their accompanying side kicks. Although we own the Prairie Primer I can’t see us making too much use of it as a curriculum, but I’ll certainly be pulling ideas from it which may fit in with our summer goals. The children’s big project will be recreating ‘the little house’, inside and out, learning many skills as they go.
This week the children have been beavering away creating their own individual goals for the summer as well as some vague weekly plans. These will not be set in stone but rather will guide the children when they are stuck for something to do. If they veer off track, so be it. I intend for this to be a laid back summer with a very hands on, working alongside each other approach. I am looking forward to not being tied to school planning and the computer but instead spending some much-needed time with my children. We all enjoy each other’s company immensely and I think it will be a lot of fun. Gary will also be joining us each day after he returns from work (he starts work at 530 am each morning and returns at 330pm, so we always have lots of lovely time with him!). This will be very important for T11 who will need his Daddy’s help with most of his projects.
Next week I am going to elaborate on all our plans, of which there are many!