Summer Project - Week 1

Summer is up and running around here. And so is our summer project. This is the first year we have done a summer project so really it is in the experimental stages. I think I have a plan, but you know how that goes.... We started out by taking a trip to the Zoo. The three little pigs and I...I mean the three bears and I... or should I say the three kids and I managed to see most of the zoo within about 3 hours. Not too shabby if you ask me. We spent a little extra time at the alligators since they are the animal we are learning about this week. We just so happened to get there while they were being fed. Ew. The kids thought it was fascinating. Well the girls did anyway, Bennett was too busy Peek-a-booing me through the peek hole in the top of the stroller to even notice. Between that and scarfing down cheerios, he didn't notice much. The next day we ventured out to the library. We found a book featuring alligators as characters and one about baby alligators. The kids each got to pick a couple that they just thought looked fun too. We got pretty excited about our books so we came right home and read them. During this time I offered Zoe a dime a book as a summer reading project (besides our animal project) and challenged her to read 100 books before school starts back up. So far she is loving that. Lucky for me, we are just writing down the books she reads and I don't have to fork over any cash until the end of the summer. But I digress.... Next we decided to talk about what we learned about alligators - did you know that they only live in the Southeastern US and China?? Well, now you do. Zoe practiced writing the word and a sentence or two about them and Sydney practiced writing AAAAAAA. She's getting pretty good. We also colored pictures of alligators and whatnot. Today we did an "alligator craft" basically making paper alligators. It was fun. So Our summer Animal-of-the-week project is off and running. Somehow we gotta get back to the zoo and library among some other scheduled activities (like swimming lessons) in the next few weeks. But everyone seems to like it enough to keep it going. Wish us luck.....