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Friday, July 10, 2009

Summer school

My family's summer study this year is based on the free Mission Friends curriculum. We made a go of it last year with Benny and her crew, but I tell you ... every time we got together, my cell phone rang with a potential foster placement. In the end, I think we were both too wary to follow through!

And that's a shame, really. My kids have loved the focus on different countries, the neat little passports, and the time spent in the kitchen trying out new recipes. (Did I mention this is free?) It works great in a group of three or 12. All you add is the time spent printing, extra reading resources if you wish and some ingredients.

Coming alongside this fun summer unit has been a new resource I stumbled on. It's called Quest for Compassion and yes, it's free. (I love free!) This site features an interactive game that seeks to educate children about life in three of the most poverty affected areas of the globe. The impact--if led by a caring parent who takes the time to add depth to the online wandering--can be profound.

That's our take on summer schooling this year. What's yours?

5 comments:

Jennifer Jo said...

Gardening, a Fresh Air kid, camp, swim lessons, an outing with my girls, and that's about it!

Hall Family said...

Just catching up on unfinished work. I love the sites you provided! Thanks! And FREE is always good!

Becky said...

I am so excited to check these out!
Thank you for sharing! For the first summer in 4+ years, we sat aside formal lesson plans, activity plans and detailed schedules! For someone who thrives on organization and controlled chaos this was a huge step! We are determined to take a break and let our minds and hearts explore and soar as we REST! (We just graduated our first!)

Anne Devlin said...

We are using http://picturingamerica.neh.gov/
Picturing America curriculum from the National Endowment for the Humanities that your sweet cousin recommended. We meet once a week with 2 other families so that we share the teaching responsibility. Lots of fun for a summer activity and it's also FREE :-)

Tara B. said...

I love both those sites! As a Lutheran I am quite familiar with the Mission Friends and use it often.

My 10 year old loves the Quest for Compassion site/game as well.

Did you know about the Kids of Courage site and downloads? They have great FREE downloadable workbooks for several countries. We are using several along with the above resources along with our SL Core 5 next fall! Here's the link: http://www.kidsofcourage.com/
just click on downloads!