Summer Scholars

Inspired by last weeks trip ... 

July is now Lego month :)

L made a calendar in school every month. 

We were in need of a new one for July so L made one herself. 

How to make ...

... a  Hula Hoop

It seems that we have switched stores. 

We used to run to the Craft Store every 5 minutes or so to stock up on things or get new items for new projects. 

But lately it seems we are spending more and more time at the hardware store instead.

I guess we are "evolving".  Thats a big word!

We have been reading the book "Big words for little people" By Jamie Lee Curtis and we are really into big words now :) 

One of our projects today was to find "big words", write them on a card and then go through newspapers and find the letters to recreate that word. 

The Ls LOVE it!!!

Anyhow, back to the hardware store. 

When I saw Elizabeth Mitchell was guest blogging on Soule Mama's blog I was so excited. 

We have loved her since the day we found her first CD after L was just born. 

The CD is called "You are my sunshine" ... thats what we used to call L when she was itty, our sunshine. 

The first year of her life she hardly heard her real name, just sunshine :)

So we fell in love with Elizabeth Mitchell and her wonderful music and yesterday she was guest blogging on my favorite bog ... awesome!!!

As soon as we saw her project, we packed up, raced to Osh to gather the materials and today, after the Summer Scholar school work was done ...

... we went to work to make our own

Hola Hoops!!!

All you need is:

poly piping, 

connectors, 

colorful tape 

and lots of little hands to help with the assembly ...

we softened the poly by dunking it into super hot water to insert the connectors easily

tape for decorating and to give it more grip ...

et voila ...

Two hola hops and TONS of fun!!!

LOVE the way Lulu shakes her none-exsisting bum!!!
And my half naked hubby walking through the pic .... it was 100F here today. Blazing heat!!!

Clearly we need more practice BUT we found some great tips on YouTube and will practice every day until we can keep these holas going and going ...

Summer Scholars

... that's what we are this summer, summer scholars.

Summer is here, school is out and we have nothing but time on our hands.
What to do, what to do, what to do???

Fancy summer classes are not quite in the budget this year.
Plus I have missed hanging out with the Ls with no schedules or plans, no places to be, no trainings or classes to race to and Lulu has missed her big L very much lately.
It's about time we can all hang out together again, get our craft on and maybe do a little learning while we are at it.

I purchased a summer home school curriculum for us, which can be used for various ages.
12 weeks, laid out step-by-step for us, perfect I thought and clicked the "buy now" button immediately.
$50 later we have a MOUNTAIN of papers in front of us, summer book lists and a whole lot of fun from the looks of it.

We prepped all week last week, got the materials ready, printed things and such.
One of the reasons I like this program is the book lists, the way you incorporate a book/story into a whole week of projects and it works well for a 4 year old and a 6 year old.

Last Friday I took L to the Library to take care of business ...

L filled out her application ALL BY HERSELF!

et voila ...

My BIG girl got her OWN library card!!!

She is so darn proud of this little piece of plastic!

And today was 

Day 1 of Week 1

of our 

Summer Scholar Program

First the Ls wrote in their journals and colored a picture.

 Then we moved on to calendar and bean math.

I added some bling to Lulu's set :) 

L has a full set of 30 calendar days to work with.

While L was doing more math Lulu used her new white board and practiced her numbers.

 Then we had some coloring works sheets ...

And then I added a little craft session, 

na-course ;)

Our home-made dot-stamp 

Plasticine ROCKS people!!!!

et-voila, twirling ladybugs

  

                                       

Then it was recess 

(aka mama needed a shower)

Then it was lunch/pick-nick time

And while I cleaned up I found this on Ls desk :)

Check out the picture, the monkey bars, a slide, a parachute kid?, a swing, trampoline and a zip line ... totally my back yard :)

Then we ran to the Library to escape the heat and did our reading session and then it was "explore time" ... aka let's get wet, wet, wet ...

We also worked on some physics theories ...

And had a wedding. 

Jessie, the Race Car was getting married to the Tonka Prince Car. 

You can't get the Princess out of my girls, I guess ...

And now they are snoozing and I am POOPED out!
We had a blast today and I can not wait for tomorrow ... we have so much cool'ness lined up, it'll be awesome!