Fun Summer Days

Post may contain affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

The days of summer are here! I really enjoy the change of schedule and activities that summer brings. Although our homeschool schedule changes for the summer months, it doesn’t mean that learning stops. I thought I would just share a bit about what our family is “learning” this summer…

Dad – My husband is building wood bed frames for my 8 year old son and 5 year old daughter. Does he have plans that he is using? No! He drew up his own plans and is doing it all himself. He is so gifted at this and has made several other things for our home. The kids love it that he is making it just for them!

Mom – I am trying out some new crochet dishcloth patterns (yes I will share the one that I like the most very soon!). Learning more about herbal remedies is also something that I continue to enjoy during the summer months. Freezer cooking has also been a new found joy…I have loved finding things that I can bake ahead and put in the freezer. We recently got a new-to-us refrigerator, allowing us to move our older refrigerator to the basement for more storage. Now I have the refrigerator and upright freezer in my kitchen that can be filled with made-ahead meals! Yeah!

19-year-old daughter – She is continuing to learn photography. My daughter helped shoot her first wedding a couple weeks ago and had so much fun. She has found some really neat websites with tons of videos that she can watch to learn all kinds of things about photography. It is fun watching her excited about learning this new skill that will hopefully serve her well as she heads into adulthood.

13-year-old son – This is my bird lover! I bought him a new Stokes field guide to read. Yes…he READS the field guides! When it came I told him we would have to put it away until “school” started in the fall. We all laughed…he knew I was just kidding. He knows that learning never stops, even though our homeschool schedule changes during the summer. My son has had so much fun feeding birds, filling his feeders, making homemade suet feeders, making homemade suet, making a ground feeder, etc. He knows SO MUCH about birds! A night a while back my daughter sat down to quiz my son from the Kansas Birds field guide. She would show him the picture of the bird and cover up the name. She wanted to see how many he could identify. He only missed about 4 in the whole field guide! It is fun watching him learn…and I have enjoyed watching the birds that come to the feeders! The picture above is one my son took of an Oriel.

8-year-old son – He has taken a bit of an interest in birds too. He started looking at the bird field guides and drawing the birds. He really is pretty good at it too! I am having him write the name of the bird on the page too and they are all going into his “Birds” notebook. Yesterday he made a nest and placed it in our apple tree. It is so cute watching his creativity! He made a fruit feeder by hammering some nails into a small log piece. He put oranges on the nails and hung the feeder out on the tree in our yard.

5-year-old daughter – I have been continuing with some school work with my daughter and right now her fascination is learning to read! I am having her read to me a little each day. She is so funny, because when she has read the same short sentence so many times she has memorized it. Then she comes to me and says, “Mommy, I can read it without even looking!” She makes me smile!

4-year-old son – My youngest is also continuing with some school work. He is so excited to be starting “Kindergarten” stuff :). He is learning his letters and sounds right now, just doing a little each day. The other day he surprised me by writing a capital A and small a on a little piece of paper. He came to me with a big smile and said, “Look Mommy, I wrote a capital A and a little a!” It is just amazing how quickly they learn.

Read-aloud time – We also have continued our read-aloud time. This is a time that we enjoy so much and don’t want to give it up over the summer. So we just continue on and choose some fun books to read together over the summer months.

So while our summer schedule is different, the kids are still enjoying learning. It is so good to see all of us enjoying learning new things.

How about you? Is your summer full of learning?