I had to add those exclamation points to make this post look more exciting.
We are having so much fun this year with summer school! When I tell you what we're doing, you'll be like, "Oh, yeah. That sounds totally thrilling." But we really are having fun! Evelyn has such a good attitude about all the junk I make her do. Here's the basic outline for Evelyn:
1. Piano for 30 minutes a day
2. Daily Chores
3. Homework workbook--5 pages a day
4. 30 minutes of reading a day
5. Daily good deed
6. Exercise
7. Weekly report on a nonfiction book of Evelyn's choice
8. Weekly science experiment
Aren't you glad you aren't my kid? Oh, and I also forgot:
Evelyn tracks how obedient she is to her parents and gets stickers for good behavior and extra chores for lack of obedience.
K, before you call child welfare, let me let you in on our secret. To quote Megamind, what makes a villain super is "PRESENTATION!"
We picked a Summer School theme of going on Adventures. Her work chart is cleverly disguised as a passport. Her chores bear aliases. For instance: Piano is hidden under "Cultural Music," and Chores are also known as "Setting up and Breaking camp." Every explorer knows that adventure takes a lot of work. It takes study, building good relationships with the natives, being in good physical condition and documenting the findings.
We turned our boring living room that looks the same year to year into *drumroll* The Enchanted Tiki room!--with an Adams' twist. It took us days to complete. We also made a compilation of adventurous music to set the mood we wanted.
To finish off Evelyn's motivation, I added prizes that she has to earn with her hard work throughout the summer. In other words, I spent over $50 in a toy store to bribe my child to obey. But it's totally working!
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| The seahorse is Evelyn's prize to do her piano WITH a happy attitude. She has to do her piano anyway, but if I don't have to hear any whining, I'll take it! |
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| The octopus is Evelyn's prize for doing chores 5 times a week. |
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| The giant blue rattlesnake is Evelyn's prize for being obedient. It's difficult to not abuse this strange feeling of power I suddenly have... |
This was one of Evelyn's science experiments. She had to create an island, and we all know an island is made by volcanoes. So we let Evelyn form one out of salt dough and then set it off with baking soda, vinegar and red food coloring. I love how she made her volcano look like the one on Pixar's new short, "Lava".
In her other experiments, Evelyn has had to play with gravity by dropping a 5 gallon jug of water from her nose in a baby swing and hold still while it swung back toward her face. She also has played with carbon dioxide by blowing up a balloon and blowing out a candle with the gasses created from mixing vinegar and b. soda. The science experiments are Evelyn's favorite.
She also has loved studying for and writing her reports. She picks the subjects, as I mentioned before, and we have studied snakes, seahorses, octopuses (which are totally awesome, by the way), rainforests, and volcanoes. I think we will be making a trip to the aquarium sometime this summer.
