BINGO

Are you making it through the first week of summer?

Carmen was VERY excited to get the kids off the bus the last day of school.  There's nothing like pelting them with water to put a smile on your face.

Looks like one of those balloons sprung a leak!

Even though we do vacation bible school the first week of summer break, I knew we still needed a plan, so Sunday, I had the kids make their own BINGO charts.  Each chart had to have two rows of chores, two rows of learning, and one row of fun.  (I don't need to make my kids have fun, do I?)

So here's a quick list of cool things that happened this week that I didn't even have to think of:

watched a sunset:

 Isabela and I pulled over at the lake and watched for 45 minutes.  We learned that the beautiful colors of the sunset sky actually happen about 30 minutes prior to the sun setting, which was at 8:38pm last night.  It was a cloudy night, so we also found lots of amazing things in the clouds, like pinocchio and elephants.

built a mud kitchen:

Two kids had 'build something' on their lists, so we moved some bricks and laid a board across them, added some stones and dandelions, and we finally have a mud kitchen.

went to a playground at 9pm:

Diego really wanted to cross this one off his list last night.  I didn't know that until we had gotten home from the sunset, so I ran up the street with him to swing.  It was just us, and it was really FUN.  A cool breeze was blowing, there were no bugs, and just enough light left to not be too scared.  But yes, I'm old, and swinging makes me nauseous.  Better to just dangle my feet.

sheet fort

Joaquin built an awesome one, with separate rooms for each child.  'Nuff said.

lots of sparkling mirrors and windows, some folded laundry, and clean tubs and toilets

dinner planned and cooked by Isabela

OK, so we did ruin the microwave for a bit.  She had a brilliant idea to stick the recipe on the microwave with a magnet.  It was out of the way, but still visible and not getting bits of food all over it.  How were we supposed to know that a magnet would cause the microwave to spark?  See, we're learning all the time.

spoke some French

Bonjour, je m'appelle Isabela.  J'ai 12 ans.  Au revoir.  I had her recite it to her dad who used to speak fluent French.  He laughs at my three-years-of-high-school-French accent.

Learned the Spanish alphabet

Two kids had this on their list, too.  I guess they wanted to start with the basics.

So the plan is to make a new BINGO chart each Sunday.  With the kids making them, I'm enjoying that it's not me telling them what to do.  So far, so good.  Wait.... what?  Summer hasn't even started yet?  Uh-oh.