Oh, How Time Passes on Feet with Wings!

   Summer School! Growing up, my mom always did a series of activities during the summer break under the name of "Summer School." To me the name did not bode failure in classes, but of fun things like doing soap carvings and learning to cross-stitch and getting an allowance of $50 in order to purchase all my own food for the week, thus learning how to budget.
   I have continued this tradition in my own home, but I have found it is actually really difficult to come up with ideas for a single child. You may think, "Yeah, whatever, give her a stickerbook and give her free reign of your home!"  Um....no thanks. My goal with summer school is not just to entertain Evelyn, but to also do so with as little stress as possible for yours truly. (And getting her to learn something wouldn't be so bad either.) In the past, we simply have spoiled her rotten by providing her with trips to Thanksgiving Point, the zoo, "big Mooshies" (the movie theater) or lots and lots of days going to the condo's swimming pool. Last year we got really {brave/ambitious/stupid} and took her camping overnight, then spent the next week recovering.
 So this year, I wanted to do something low key that was exciting to Evelyn, and didn't cancel the possibility of going on big trips. My sister gave me the idea of doing a Harry Potter theme. Of course, Evelyn hasn't seen the whole movie. That would have been doing something detrimental to my own sleep, and we mustn't do that. But we did watch the fun parts. Then the next day, we had a visitor! 

  

   We found a little barn owl on our table with an invitation for Evelyn to participate in a Summer Academy!

   Evelyn was in love with the little owl and named her Fanna. Every night Fanna has to fly away to the school so that Evelyn can get her next assignment by the next morning.  We have done all sorts of fun things together, and when Evelyn is really good, Fanna will bring her a chocolate coin from the school.

  

For the first few days we had Fanna, Evelyn was determined to catch a glimpse of Fanna flying away. I had to prevent her sometimes from opening the front door and chucking the poor owl outside.  We told her Fanna was too shy to fly in front of her, but that only satisfied my little four-year-old's curiousity for a few days, then it was back to the drawing-board to figure out a way to watch Fanna fly. She would get so mad when Fanna would fly off without saying goodby to her. Finally, we had to tell her Fanna doesn't really fly to the school, she travels by magic; so she just disappears.

Today, Fanna brought Evelyn a whole roomful of balloons. We were very confused how Fanna carried all those balloons. I thought she must have brought them over one by one, but Evelyn asked Fanna how she accomplished such a task, and Fanna told her she carried them all in a big line by magic. I think that must have been quite a parade.

Here is Evelyn's reaction when she first saw the balloons.



....And then she dove right in!