The first week of summer vacation has gone by quickly. We had no schedule but managed to get to the pool several times, eat at new and fun places along the coast, meet up with friends for some ‘girlie time’, and have a date with my hubby! I say we have done pretty well so far.
I was evaluating activities for the boys. I don’t want then to rely on me to schedule their every move and we have had a couple of moments where I have had to enforce the “Go out to play on your own without having to have Mommy or Daddy create interesting learning moments that will enrich your lives forever and create amazing citizens and future Steve Jobs for the world“….you know what I mean.
I noticed just how much we engage in growing, creating or experimenting. Almost all the most recent ‘projects’ are based on watching and growing. Take for instance this:
While the lumps of plastic may look like a grand old waste of time, they are actually tubes ready for eruptions of soda as we create geysers with Mentos mints. The boys are very excited to do the project and I feel bad (for the first time ever) that I don’t have soda in the house. Once I finally remember to pick some up (soda is never on our shopping list), we will have orange red, brown and green sticky liquids erupting all over! Best use of soda in my opinion. Check here for my alternatives on the stuff my kids drink. I’ll post on the actual event when it happens 🙂
Button has added to his collection of pets again. In addition to his nine fish, who are doing very well indeed despite our completely novice skills with a moderately high maintenance tank, he now has five caterpillars. He sent off for them as we have a butterfly garden net thingy (no idea what it is really called) where one can watch the life-cycle of a butterfly. So far we have 5 rather fat caterpillars and we watch, wait and journal about their metamorphosis into the beautiful creatures we will release as soon as they become said beauties.
Finally, Nana is over from England for the next few weeks and she has treated the boys to a very cool gift…
The boys are going to grow their own Venus Fly traps from scratch! I’m delighted because they seen pretty hardy plants (I do NOT have a green thumb) and the directions are so child friendly, the terrarium was set up without any help from me…I love fostering independence.
So we are all set for summer observations! Those journals are going to be filled with so much information. So far, no one has complained about not having anything to write each day. I’m a happy mommy and the boys are happily engaged. But right now, we’re off to the pool for some outdoor fun!