Summer school.... Not a good grade

This year I had the stellar idea to do a couple weeks of Summer School.  I figured I would scatter them throughout the summer so that just when the kids and I were starting to get bored, we would have some good structure and interesting activities to do, and we'd also be able to check off a few school days on the ol' attendance register for the state, thereby allowing us a few more breaks during the regular school year.

But then it turned out I never found myself getting bored.  In fact, (no surprise) I have not had enough time in the days to get everything done this summer.  Not sure why I thought it would be different this year.

Nevertheless, I decided to at least schedule in one week of summer school because I had this niggling idea in my brain for a comprehensive unit study/theme for the week; I called it, "From Self-Centered Consumers to Compassionate Citizens."

My idea was was to take 5 days to cover the topic of citizenship, hoping to help the kids (and me) move past the self-focused thinking we are so prone to.  So the outline was:

Day 1: Being a Citizen in the Home (learning to help others, serve without being asked, etc)
Day 2:  Being a Citizen of the Neighborhood (serving those around us, especially the elderly or weak)
Day 3: Being a Citizen of the City (serving strangers, volunteering for local organizations, etc)
Day 4:  Being a Citizen of the Country (patriotism, instruction about national government branches, etc)
Day 5: Being a Citizen of Heaven

I found a bunch of videos to watch on the various days, compiled a list of applicable Bible verses to memorize, found some books and articles to read, and even a couple crafts.  Then I set up some times to volunteer at our local food bank and neighborhood festival.

And we did start off strong....  On the first day we made this craft together:

But then all of our PLAYING got in the way (see previous posts), and the rest of the week we kind of slacked off.

Some of the reading was done, all of the videos were watched, and some verses were memorized.... so I guess it was better than nothing.  But both of our volunteering times didn't work out for various reasons and we were disappointed by that.  We didn't end up being very good citizens after all!

So now we're back to just having regular summer.... and regular school still start way too soon.

Maybe summer school will work better next year!