Hellobee

Before summer started, I was really looking forward to having some unscheduled time with my kids. Silly me — it seems like we have been on the go the entire time, but there still have been some days where we had nowhere to be and nothing to do.  I knew I had a short two months before my three boys would be headed for school. (For a SAHM who has spent every waking hour with their kiddos this is a huge deal.)  I quickly realized that this unscheduled time was not exactly what I had expected.  The kids were going bonkers and bouncing off the walls.  Without our normal routine of James’ preschool from the past year leading our schedule, our house was quickly turning into a storm of chaos that drove this momma crazy.  I decided I needed to fix it quick if I was going to survive the summer.

The first thing I did was try to have preschool time with the kids on my own. I figured, I was a teacher in my past pre-motherhood life; I should be able to do this with my kids.  It was a bit of a disaster.  James did not want to do anything with me that involved letters, counting, or basic skills.  He just wanted to sit and watch TV.  I obviously wasn’t going to let our summer turn into two months of TV watching, so I decided to talk to my dad. (I think I have mentioned it before, but I live next door to my parents.)  My dad is a recently retired elementary school teacher so I had hope that maybe he could help me with the kids. After talking with him for a while we came up with the idea of Papa Preschool.

Each morning he takes the kids one at a time to his house for some one on one preschool time. They work on letters, writing stories, coloring, cutting and other preschool skills.  While each boy is spending time with my dad, I do crafts and other activities with the other three.  I wasn’t sure if they were going to like it, but it has worked out fantastically.  Each morning they ask when Papa is coming over to get them.  They fight over who gets to go first (we have a rotating system) and they come back excited about what they learned.

After about 2 weeks after starting Papa preschool, my parents had a trip to Alaska planned.  I was a little worried about how that would change our daily activities. I knew I needed to up my game if I was going to keep all kids entertained with nothing to break up our days for a week. I have to admit part of it was that I didn’t want to get bored either. I have been at home with my kids for four years but this was the first time I was feeling like I just didn’t want to read the same books or play with the same toys all day long. I also wanted to keep up their enthusiasm for learning activities.

I thought back to my teaching experience and realize I used to come up with activities every day to engage and encourage students’ learning. I needed to do it for my own kids. So I decided to base everything for the week around a theme.  It helped me focus on what we should do and what type of activities I could come up with. Since my parents were on their way to Alaska, I thought it would make a nice theme.  Here are the things I did throughout the week to keep with our theme.

Lesson 1:  State Information

We started our week off with coloring pages with information about the state.  I printed out maps of North America. We drew dots for the different places we knew: Los Angeles, San Diego, Buffalo, and of course Anchorage, Alaska.  We talked about how long it would take to get to each place in a car or on a plane.  They were shocked at how many episodes of Super Why (somewhere between 17 and 20) they could watch on a plane to Alaska. We also colored in the flag and the state flower.  It was a simple activity but it got them excited about the week.

Lesson 2:  Alaskan Wildlife

Being a biologist, I of course had to teach them about the local wildlife.  I got down some of our stuffed animals and printed out some more coloring sheets.  We learned about orcas, bald eagles, caribou and salmon.  Then we watched a few you tube videos of each of the animals in the wild.  We talked about the differences in animals that swim, fly or walk and the boys decided they like orcas the best because they get to swim and don’t have to wait for their mommies to say its OK. (Oh the things kids say)

Lesson 3:  Hike in the front yard

We decided to go on a snowy nature hike that day. Yes I know that sounds crazy — it’s June in Los Angeles! Well we had to use our imagination a little bit. I took all of the ice out of our freezer and threw it on our lawn. They left their pajamas on and got all of their hats and gloves out and played in our Los Angeles snow storm.  We used the lid to our sand box as a sled, and a board for snowboarding and went on some wild adventures all in the comfort of our own front yard and our imaginations.

California summer sledding

Make believe snowboarding

Lesson 4:  Cloud in a glass

We took some time to talk about Alaskan weather.  The kids decided they wanted to live in Alaska because they like rain and it doesn’t rain enough in LA. I decided to throw in a little science experiment for the kids. (I can’t help it, it’s just in my nature.) We made a cloud in a glass. It’s a pretty simple experiment that kept the kids interested for a long time. It starts with a glass or a jar with hot water in the bottom. It helps to swirl the water around to get moisture on the walls of the glass.  Put a cold plate or lid on top with some ice on top of the jar. There might be some condensation on the side but no clouds yet.  Next either spray some aerosol hairspray or air freshener, or use a smoking match.  Replace the lid and watch the swirling cloud.  It’s fantastic fun!  It teaches kids about the formation of clouds and convection currents.

My little scientists

Cloud in a glass

Touching a cloud

That was it for Alaska week.  It went so well I decided to keep it up with the themes.  Coming soon….. Space week!

Did you do anything to spice up your summer with your kids?