Summer Planning

I have just begun thinking about summer. It might have something to do with the fact that we have had several below freezing days in a row and snow two days in a row. I know my friends to the North are saying, "that's nothing", but to us in the Ohio Valley of KY, it's something.

So, on to to summer...

The obvious start is reading and read-alouds. This will continue as part of bedtime, as usual. Nothing to plan other than to make sure I have some good books in my running list that I can check out from the library. I will include some biographies and historical literature in this category.

My idea from there is to have each day be a specific "camp" day. So far I have

Art Camp

• Watercolor Tutorials from Hearts and Trees (scroll down to the links on the sidebar) - currently she has 8 lessons
• Usborne's I Can Draw Animals - I'm on the waiting list to check this out of the library. If I like it, I'll buy it.
• I also may purchase the Clouds Art Show pdf, also from Hearts and Trees
• Field trip(s) to the KY Museum of Arts and Crafts and the Speed Art Museum

Cooking Camp
Kids Cooking Lessons from Kids Cooking Activities, possibly finishing with a end of summer Pizza Cooking party with a few friends. There are 13 lessons and I may combine the Assistant Chef and the Chef in Training program because he already has kitchen experience.

Science/Nature Camp

• Walks at local parks, exploring some we haven't been to before
• easy science experiments from a kit he received for his last birthday and this website
• Field trips to the Science Museum

And that's as far as I've gotten. I know I don't want to forget math, but we use math almost day, and I know that his skills are already at first grade level, except perhaps with money and time. However, having never used a formal program before, I don't know how to come up with "math camp" ideas.

My other thought is to have a whole week devoted to each subject on a rotating basis so he would have a whole art camp week, capped off by a field trip to a museum on Friday and then we wouldn't do it again untit it came up in the rotation again. However, I'm leaning more toward each "subject" being a day of the week.

But this is just my preliminary thoughts, so I'll be searching and looking for ideas all the way up to June, which is when we will start our summer, probably with a vacation.