16 June 2008

First real day of summer vacation

From Friday: Ah, the last day of school. Julia is only in school this morning for an hour and a half, and I have to do a number of chores before I pick her up.

Oh, the sweetness of the last day of school. Julia doesn't get it, and I wonder if all the other kids do. No matter, I remember that feeling of freedom -- okay, not in Kindergarten, but by 3rd grade. Days of playing in the yard, folding towels, doing chores, going to swim club, endless hours of board games, pogo stick tournaments, and evenings at the top of our street playing spud or kick ball. I remember especially how ordinary it felt. I could inhabit that little girl's body again and be there it is so clear.

I did an incredible clean and purge of the computer/toy room that will called the Summer Romm for now. I left out only the toys she plays with, dress up stuff, puppets, games, crafts, and work books. You might wonder what I put away. Well, it is enough to fill a medium-sized closet -- dolls, kitchen stuff, stuffed toys, and younger kid toys.

The new room is cleaner and the toys that are left are easier to find. Julia loved that I separated her little animals and people into their own plastic boxes, as she was always dumping out the bigger bin to find her small people and animals.

Monday: I hadn't published the above and so appending it to today. I'll go on from where I left off.

I picked Julia up at 9:22 from school. The kids streamed out of the sturdy old brick building to meet parents, caregivers, or their buses.Teachers blew bubbles and grownups cheered. It was one of those tearing up situations. All so sweet. Julia gave hugs to Christy and Nicole and Margot and a host of other people who she sees on a daily basis. We waved to the kids on buses and shouted out that they should have a Happy Summer!

Julia and I went shopping right after school for the last few things for the new summer room. We found a chair and little rug at Target, as well as new lunch stuff for camp. We spent time that day decorating the room and then, because I was excited to try what I had figured out for her, we did letter work. We have done two more days of letter work since then and Julia is willing to do the silly activities and th writing that I ask her to do. We have done the letters, M, S, and R. If we can keep this up, we will get through the alphabet in a month. I am hoping that our matching came will get a bit more difficult this first time through the alphabet and also that Julia will get more use to copying words in additional to tracing over them. According to her report card, she can identify almost all the letters in a comfortable testing situation. She can also do that at home. My goal is to put letter sounds to the letters. We are using the putnik cheers and using letter sounds through out the day. She is getting the idea although much of the time she does not match up the correct sound and letter.

We went to an FCC picnic this weekend, and were almost rained out. We had a good shelter and jackets for the kids. Grilling the hotdogs and brats (we are in WI afterall) was a challenge, but with enough of lighter fluid and a few breaks in the showers, we ate well. Then the family who makes homemade beer came and spirits did pick up a bit. The kids, of course, didn't need much but a bit of junk food to have fun.

Julia is comfortable in this group, but she still doesn't really play with any of the kids her age. I figure in this group which is a large group for her, we well just let her socialize to her own tune.

On Sunday, we got to our community pool. Julia had a great time splashing and swimming, but it was still a bit too cold for me. David came with us and we took turns standing in the water.

This morning, Julia and I are having breakfast while watching Super Readers and Dragon Tales, two PBS shows. I am not crazy about Dragon Tales, but Super Readers is excellent and Julia loves it. If we could start the day with just one of these shows and then move onto letter work, she can be on the camp bus on time starting next week.

No comments: