But we are now in summer, and what will summer look like for us? How can we utilize “Summer Schooling” to better prepare us for City Schooling?
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| This past week we did an experiment that related to whale blubber (to go along with our Under the Sea theme). |
Our typical summers are usually very active and include activities / learning experiences at home and away from home, out and about around Houston / seeing friends, camps and other activities with organizations, and more. We know this summer will look very different for us because of COVID-19 and the safety precautions our family is taking. We typically do have a flexible summer learning schedule (so this won’t be too out of the norm for us!), but I plan to ramp it up a bit more than normal so we can better prepare for our 2020 - 2021 City Schooling year. I also wanted to try out some things this summer that I may do or use when City Schooling in the Fall (test run!).
So what will my Summer Schooling look like? I wrote out a plan that could of course change at any time. I like to work with themes typically so I have themes for each month that are very open-ended, and then I have themes per week. For end of May / June I have a “Summer Theme”, and this past week’s theme was “Under the Sea.” We will also have a focus each day:
Monday: English Language Arts / Movies
Tuesday: Spanish and Math Fun / Games
Wednesday: Science and Social Studies / Experiments / Cooking
Thursday: Spanish and Fine Arts
The days of the week schedule is actually very similar to what we tried to do during Crisis Schooling, and even with the new school year I hope to keep to a 4 day school week or less. During Crisis Schooling I found it was best to work with each child separately so I rotated AM with one, PM with the other. I am hoping to avoid this with City Schooling and work with both children (one room school house!) together (for the most part).
So what else?
Chore List: I need to make a chore list for the kids (or have them help me create one).
Read: At minimum read 30 minutes daily.
Write: Write daily in their “I Survived” / COVID-19 journals, or they can choose to write elsewhere.
Technology: Limited (still working on trying to find the appropriate mix for this one)! Spanish only on Tuesday and Thursday.
So what were our Week 1 plans? What did we do or plan to do for Under the Sea? Short summary below.
Monday:
-Reading and Writing (A lot of their reading and writing is free choice, but I also look for books at the library that fit under our theme).
-Movies: Little Mermaid and Giants of the Deep Blue (Disney+)
Tuesday:
-Reading and Writing in Spanish
-YouTube Read Aloud: El Pez Arco Iris / The Rainbow Fish
-Math: Coding
-AI for Oceans and Disney’s Moana
-Board Games
Wednesday:
-Reading and Writing
-Science: How Do Whales Stay Warm? (I also borrowed whale books from the library).
-Cooking: PB&J Tacos
Thursday:
-Reading and Writing in Spanish
-Spanish Board Games
-Arts: The Rainbow Fish Art
Friday:
-Reading and Writing
So did everything work out as planned? No, of course not! But we will keep working on finding the right summer learning groove for us. I was going to go with a beach theme for this upcoming week (again, very open-ended)... but at the same time, I also need to address what is happening right now in our history with racism. I may stick with our beach theme, and just find ways to have conversations about racism also.
I’ve also started to think about how our City Schooling may take a very non-traditional approach to learning. For example, what if reading / writing / art focused a lot on developing their own graphic novels? What if a large portion of our math focused on developing coding skills? What if service / giving back could be at the center of our learning experience? How might that look? Or what if part of history lessons focused on current events (and learning about the current events through the arts)? These are just some very initial thoughts, and I have a ways to go to think through them in order for us to be most successful.
So what do you think? How do you incorporate learning into summer? How might COVID-19 affect those plans?
-Tara
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