Summer Days 2018: Readiness and Lego Camps

For two back-to-back weeks in July, the boys were both busy with camps at school. The first week was Rory’s kindergarten readiness camp and Riley’s Animal Grossology Lego camp.

When I pulled up to SCR on Monday morning, Rory lost it. He admitted he was scared to go to camp, but nothing I said calmed him down. He walked in crying.

I did what I had to do and left him in the care of the two awesome kindergarten teachers, Allison and Jessica. I got a couple of pictures an hour or so later of a smiling boy. So grateful for that!

He didn’t cry the rest of the week and seemed to have a good time at camp. They practiced reading short stories, writing their names, recognizing letters and the sounds they make, and identifying sight words and rhyming words.

They also read a new book each day and completed an art project to go along with it. And they did lots of activities with the numbers 0-20, shapes, and patterns. Such a fun week to get him excited about kindergarten!

Riley had fun at Lego camp as well. They discussed two new animals each day, including snakes, spiders, turkeys, dragonflies, chameleons, and frogs. They also completed movable builds to go along with each animal, as well as a few art projects throughout the week.

The second week was Riley’s readiness camp. Ms. Paulin and Ms. Cobb (now Mrs. Rucker!) taught this camp, and, even though he would have preferred to stay home and play with his Legos, Riley was so happy to spend all day with his old teachers.

They spent part of each day on ELA and part on math, with snack, lunch, recess, and arts and crafts time added in as well. In ELA, they reviewed following directions, complete vs incomplete sentences, punctuation, compound words, synonyms vs antonyms, and cursive writing. In math, they reviewed even vs odd numbers, place value, greater than vs lesser than vs equal to, math facts, adding and subtracting two and three digit numbers, telling time, bar graphs, counting money, shapes, and rounding.

Only a few more days left to squeeze the most we can out of summer!

Summer Days 2018: Part Three

There was a lot more to the first week of July than what I shared previously. We were super busy doing lots of fun things!

We made our annual trip to the Cool Zoo on Monday, July 2. Everyone had a great time, but the zoo unexpectedly lost power just after lunchtime. They shut down the splash area and the lazy river, so the kids snacked and played in the sand and snacked some more. We had no way of knowing when the power would come back on, so we eventually decided to leave around 2pm. But they gave us vouchers to come back again another day!

We stayed close to home the next day and did a fun project: blow painting monsters! I got the idea from a fellow Jazzerciser, who did it with her two boys. Riley and Rory didn’t really like using the straws to blow the paint around their canvases; it was too hard for them. They decided to switch to using wooden sticks to smear the paint around and then used brushes for their second creations.

  

 

Whatever way they did it, I love their end results, especially after I glued some googly eyes on and they added details with Sharpies. So cool! I think we’re going to hang them all together on the wall outside of Riley’s room.

 

On July 5, after Rory napped and Riley did some summer reading…..

…..we went to Tutti Frutti with Aunt E, Kate, and Luke and then back to their house to play for a bit. The littlest two were in rare form!

July 6 was a total adventure. Heidi and I decided to take our four kids to the aquarium, failing to remember that Essence Fest was going on down there. It was super crowded, but we managed to get into the Riverwalk parking lot with little issue.

We walked through the Riverwalk (promising the kids we’d be back later in the day) and figured we’d just have to cross through Spanish Plaza to get to the aquarium.

• Problem #1: the plaza was completely inaccessible on account of construction.
• Problem #2: it was POURING rain.

We had to walk all the way down towards the casino and then cross the street to finally get under cover by the aquarium’s front entrance. We were all pretty soaked by the time we got there, even with umbrellas. And, of course, the rain slacked off right as we walked up. Crazy!

In fact, by the time we got upstairs to the birds 45 minutes later, the sun was back out and shining. The kids loved feeding the little birds, but it took some effort to get any to come down to the feed sticks we were all holding. But we managed to entice a few!

 

 

They all loved seeing the new otters, Rory touched a stingray, and I was floored to see the changes in the Gulf exhibit. They took out the bleachers and removed the dividing wall at the front. Now you can walk right up and touch the exhibit’s thick glass walls. It’s still my favorite spot in the whole place!

 

 

 

We spent about an hour and a half at the aquarium, which was perfect. We then walked back to the Riverwalk, where we treated the kids to candy from It’Sugar, had lunch in the food court, and then let them run around in the play area before parting ways.

A totally fun day, but remind me NEVER to go anywhere near that area of the city during Essence again. It took us 45 minutes just to go half a mile to get on the interstate for home.

Oh, and FYI…..school starts two weeks from tomorrow!