Summertime!!!

I don't know about you, but our summers are filled with activity. This year, we started homeschooling July 1 and it's been great. I did this for a couple of reasons.
1. It's hot and it's nice to stay in the AC
2. There are lots of free summer activities in our area (see below)
3. We started last year in Sept and had to go all the way to the middle of May. We don't want to repeat that.
4. We want a long Christmas break
5. I want to be finished by May 1 so I can completely focus on evaluations.

So , back to the topic of summer...
We started July 1. There are many activities going on this summer that I am incorporating into our homeschool.
1. My kids are taking a class at the local state park on Thursdays in July. The class is free and all about birds that you can find locally. The kids are loving it and seem to be getting a great deal from it.
2. VBS!!! They do get a lot out of VBS. For our homeschool, this covers music and art and sometimes Bible history.
3. Harp lessons - Our local state park is offering free autoharp lessons on Wednesday afternoons.
4. Free movies - We have been reading and doing activities with Charlotte's Web by E.B.White and the movie is free this week at a local theater.
5. Library Summer Reading Program - The library system in the neighboring county is offering an awesome summer reading program. They have all sorts of special programs from health and nutrition to sign language to astronomy classes and so on.
6. Fourth of July in Gettysburg - see previous post on this one.

Life is learning. These are the things my kids will remember much better than anything I can "teach" them from a textbook. Even after the summer is over, I will continue to search for opportunities such as these.