Summer Fun Week One

The girls have now had their first full week of summer vacation. 

I still can't believe that I now have a Kindergartener and a 2nd Grader!

We started off with a trip to the zoo for Christopher's company picnic, a t-ball game, a hike, and a visit from Aunt Nea!  I love watching 4-year old t-ball.  They are so cute and non-competitive.  One of Ella's friends actually stopped in the middle of running the bases to say "hi!" to her on the field.

Smiley's first carousel ride!

Hannah with her scavenger hunt map

Ella's first T-ball Game
She was so happy to be on the Purple Team - her favorite color

Hiking at Natural Bridge State Park

After a busy and fun-filled weekend, we were ready to start our week.

I tried to have some kind of activity or project each day, but we were pretty flexible in our week.  We just have this week off before summer school starts and I want to try to spend as much time with the girls as possible.

We started off with Raised Salt Painting and got to use our homemade watercolors.

This were really pretty cool and the girls loved doing it!

http://www.housingaforest.com/raised-salt-painting/

Hannah's painting still wet

After it dried

Next we tried Paper Plate Weaving which is still a work in progress.  The girls like it, but only work on it a little bit each day.

http://www.redtedart.com/2014/04/16/paper-plate-weaving/

Hannah's art teacher sent home a summer art challenge where they have 12 different challenges for the summer and they can complete either 5, 8, or all 12.  We are going for all 12 and were able to complete 3 this year.

She was given three different websites to try out some online drawing games which were all neat in their own way!

http://mrdoob.com/projects/harmony

www.picassohead.com

http://bomomo.com

She had a building project which she completed with Legos.  They have been building with legos all week and had some pretty big creations that they finished, but these are the ones that she wanted documented.

The last challenge that she completed was an art project of her choice - we used the Raised Salt Painting project for this.

Hannah has her first couple of softball games this week, too.  I also am loving this age group for sports.  She had a friend on the other team cheering for her out on the field when she was up at bat.  I love our friends!

Back to crafts, my sister-in-law sent us the idea for this next one. Food Coloring Explosion Activity

http://craftsbyamanda.com/2011/03/colorful-kitchen-experiment-for-kids.html

 All is takes is milk, food coloring, and dish soap

Yesterday, we finally tried our hand at Bubble Painting.  I've seen this idea many times before, but had never had the girls try it out.  They had a lot of fun with it - especially with blowing the bubbles!

http://www.housingaforest.com/bubble-painting/

We are also working on an on-going summer project.  Along with the girls signing up for the summer library reading program, I have started a reading chain for them.  This website has a really nice printable to start the chain off.

http://eighteen25.blogspot.com/2013/06/summer-reading-chain.html

Each girl has their own chain and each link has the name of the book and the number of pages in the book.  I think it will be fun for the girls to see just how many books and pages they can read this summer! It will be neat to watch it grow.

To go along with the reading programs, we are trying to work through the Little House books.  We are almost finished with Little House in the Big Woods.

Now we are off to another busy weekend and week!