Making Waves

So, school is officially "out" for the summer. We have all our days logged and now we are busy preparing for our jam-packed June and 3 weeks straight of Vacation Bible Schools! Fortunately, they each have a different theme and I have to admit that Granny and Grandad's VBS is the one that is most anticipated because Granny is going to be dressed up like a penguin!!!

But, I didn't want our summer to go by without some structure so I spent Sunday afternoon preparing a "loose" summer schedule. I planned time into our days for me to complete some projects over the summer and for Camp Wannalaffalotta. I tend to be a "Type A" personality and like to "get stuff done" and checked off my list, so planning fun time with my children (or anything else for that matter) is something I have to do or it's likely not to happen, even though it's high on my priority list. I am definitely not a creative person, so I enjoy reading other blogs and getting inspired. Life as Mom has done all the work in planning themes for the 16 weeks of summer and giving all kinds of great snack, craft, reading and field trip ideas to keep you from getting bored and help you to be purposeful about spending quality time with your children this summer. I love it! Also, it's so much more educational than the children even think! Of course, we won't be able to do this the week of our Mission Trip in Cherokee and probably not the week we visit Granny and Grandad. I have some other fun stuff in the works for that week as we'll be there for the 1st day of Summer, Father's Day and Granny's birthday!

This first week was all about the ocean and sea life. I was thrilled to see this was first up as Mandy and Aaron invited us to the aquarium with them this week. Perfect! On Tuesday, we headed to the library to check out some books that went with the theme and picked up just a few simple supplies for the crafts I had picked out online. (We also stopped by the brand-new museum in town that was hosting a Civil War display.) So, here's what we did this week!

Tuesday
Book: Ocean Hunters (Only had one reference to millions of years at the very end and I edited it as I was reading aloud.)
Crafts: Paper Plate Fish and Simple Origami Whales
Just for fun I pulled out some old photos from a babysitting trip in the Keys when I swam with the barracudas and the jelly fish (we read about both of those animals today)! I was a really awesome mama for a little while today!

Paper Plate Fish

Wednesday
Books: Animal Faces In the Water, Gooey Jellyfish, What is a Fish?
Craft: Paper-Mache Octopus (A bit ambitious, but fun! We did not get finished this week. But if it turns out, I will post a picture later.)
Snack: Edible Aquarium

Edible Aquarium

Making the octopus. Gotta love Abby's face!

Thursday
Books: The Underwater Alphabet Book, In the Sea
Crafts: Textured Starfish, Put another layer on the octopus

Friday
Field Trip to the Tennessee Aquarium! In order to get the most from our trip I downloaded and printed off a few of the free resources from the website for the children to do while we were at the aquarium. (Highlights from our field trip will be up later in another post.)

Next Week's Theme: Toys and Kid Stuff