Summer

I have been really busy with Brayden's swim practices and meets, basketball practices and games and getting work made for school. Brayden has swim practice four days a week and then meets almost every Saturday. The meets go from 7:30 am until about 2:00 pm. Unfortunately, it has been pretty dreary on most of the Saturdays we have had meets. We have left the little girls home with Dakota so they don't have to be out all day and so we don't have to worry about them by the pools. The meets are really crowded. Brayden is a pretty good swimmer, so they have been putting him in the relays which are at the very beginning and the very end of the meets. Nice. Our job is being a timer every other meet, which is fun. It is fun to be able to be so close to all of the swimmers. I may see if Brookelyn wants to be on the team next year. I doubt if I would have her swim at the meets, but going to all of the practices would get her to be a good swimmer. I am looking into getting her and Sasha into a gymnastics class. Sasha saw someone do a somersault on tv and then did a perfect one. She is really coordinated. Brookelyn has been wanting to do gymnastics or ballet, but I haven't found a place I like yet.
I have been spending a lot of time ordering materials and making work for the school. I buy the materials, make the work, laminate it, cut it out, put it in the box or give it to a teacher and then add it to the list. The teachers take turn studying different units of study each month, such as Oceanography, Dinosaurs, Gardening, Insects, Art, Farm, Transportation...and each unit has a box that is filled with posters, puzzles, books, and different types of "work" for the children to do such as working with matching cards, labeling different dinosaurs, labeling parts of a flower...When I started doing this, a lot of the boxes were pretty empty or a lot of the work was old or broken. So I have spent a lot of time in teacher's stores buying supplies. A lot of things can be bought, but a lot of the Montessori work has to be made by hand. I do a lot of it in the evening when the kids are in bed. I try to get it done when I am at school, but it's is kind of an endless job and I cannot seem to stop. I really like seeing the children working on things that I made or bought and the teachers are happy to get new work in their classroom. I made a new unit box of science and had a lot of fun buying a microscope, slides, a working volcano, different magnets, and books about science. I am now working on new unit boxes for each of the continents. I bought pdf files of flags from the different continents, so I have been printing, cutting, gluing them on to cardstock, and laminating them. I am making a set for the preschool classes to do flag matching work as well as some for them to do labeling work with. It takes A LOT of time. A lot of our teachers and parents travel overseas during the summer so I have asked them to bring back different currency from the countries they visit. I have been learning a lot and it's really fun to work on things I know my children will be using at school.
Dakota is taking 12 college credits this summer. She is transferring to a differnt art school in the fall and it requires four and a half years of classes. Since it costs about $42,000 a year, I thought it would be better for her to take 12 of the credits this summer, so she will graduate in four years. She already has three credits from high school that will count. It works out will since there aren't a lot of summer jobs right now anyway. It also works out because she has been able to babysit for me during the swim meets as well.