Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Summer!

Summer is here in NYC.  It's so hot.  The kids are keeping busy throughout the days and I just prefer to stay indoors with my air conditioner on, lol.  K went to a water park called Splish Splash with her friends yesterday, the beach a few times, and will probably go to the movies tonight.  Her last day of school was Monday.  She chose all her classes for senior year.  It looks like this:  Trigonometry, AP Literature, Government & Economics, Astronomy & Forensics, Latin, and Yearbook.  She did very well this year and is already planning for college.

J has been spending lots of time with friends.  They usually hang out at the park, running through the sprinklers, and watching the boys play basketball.  They all had a great game of dodge ball going the other day, too.  Sometimes they grab a bite to eat at a nearby diner or catch a movie.  Today she's taking advantage of the heat and spending the day in her friend's pool.  Summer dance classes are in full-swing.  Tuesdays she takes ballet, tap, and lyrical, Thursdays she takes contemporary and hip-hop, and now on Mondays she's part of a class based on the show "Glee".  Her dance team (her immediate team of 6 members) was just notified that based on their platinum first place performance at one of their competitions this year, they won a full scholarship to 8 hours of master classes and free competition fees to an "Ultimate Overall Challenge" in NJ in July.  It's like a mini-Nationals and is spread out over 3 days.  Needless to say, the studio owner is thrilled and we are all so proud of them.

W is spending his summer so far doing what he loves best - going to the playground and playing Nerf Gun Tag with his friends on the block.  Auditions for a summer musical are coming up and he is looking forward to that.  It will be 2 weeks of rehearsals - 2 hours each day, 5 days a week - with 2 Saturday shows.  He was in this program last year and loved it.  J may join again, too, with her friend Amanda, but she's right at the age cutoff and besides, she'll be dancing at a fundraiser for St. Jude's Childrens Hospital that same day as the performance.

W will also be finishing up AO Year 2 all summer.  We took a lot of time away from our schedule, so it's time to catch up.  We have a lot of fun with it and W enjoys it all.  We really only spend about 2 hours each morning on academics.  The rest of the day is his.  I want to try and get to Year 3 by autumn.  I ordered a few books already, like Writing Strands 2, Simply Grammar, The Story of Inventions, and Science Lab in a Supermarket.  Those cost about $68 total.  I only need to buy 2 more books on the schedule - American Tall Tales and The Princess and the Goblin.  Then I still need to buy about 8 of the "free reading" books (all the others I either have already or downloaded free on my Nook).  I can get those for a few dollars each, though.  So I probably won't spend more than $150 on his total 4th grade curriculum.

Loving life here in NYC.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi!
I've been visiting for about a month now and Thank you! I'm so happy I found you.
I have a 8yr old son who is loosing his love of learning in PS and I'm now at 85% sure that we will stay home come Sept.
We used to do so much more before K, really enjoying all NYC offer but now - nothing. Org school is really taking away time from exploring and thinking and growing as a human being.
/Mary in the Bronx.

NYCitymomx3 said...

LOL at 85%. I remember having that shred of insecurity about homeschooling, too. What made me feel better about taking the plunge was knowing that nothing is ever set in stone and public school is always there if homeschooling doesn't work out. Take things month to month and see how it goes. I can almost guarantee that you will wish you'd done this sooner. :)

Good luck with everything and let me know what happens!

Anonymous said...

Keep you posted for sure - I'll let you know my %...
/Mary.