Thinking Ahead: Resources for Summer Break

There is something about an approaching Spring that always makes me start in on lists for the upcoming months.  Yes, I know that we're on break right now and we've still got until June to finish up Henry's preschool year.  And I know the whole point of finishing up by June is so we could have a nice summer break to welcome little Peter or Violet to the family before getting back to work in September.  I just think that three months is an awfully long stretch of time where we could be doing something, even if it's not terribly structured.

So, I flipped through the resource sections of a few classical education books and came up with some materials that should be helpful over the summer (and in the years to come).

Art

We'll continue with the second book of the Draw Write Now series in the fall, but these looked like great books to explore over the summer:

• Discovering Great Artists: Hands-On Art for Children in the Styles of the Great Masters (Bright Ideas for Learning) - Over 150 activities that allow children to create their own art projects in the styles of great artists like Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Michelangelo, da Vinci, and more.

•  Ed Emberley's Picture Pie (Ed Emberley Drawing Books) - This one will be fun for Oliver and maybe Jane, too!  It's not so much a drawing book as a cut and paste book.  I cut out basic shapes from colored paper and they use them to create pictures.  I'll probably get a few craft paper punches to help out with this one.  It's art plus color and shapes review rolled into one.

Music

•  Classical Music for Dummies - While the kids doodle and color, we can listen to this book's accompanying CD.  Yes, we listen to our Pandora classical music station all the time, but this installment of the "Dummies" series has a sort of guided listening experience.  As we listen to the music, I can read aloud from the book's explanation of what exactly we're hearing.

Language Arts

• Spelling Plus: 1000 Words toward Spelling Success - Did you know that 90% of the words in English texts consists of the same 1000 words?  Mastering this list at an early age can be a big help later on.  We might as well get started now.
• Writing Road to Reading 6th Rev Ed.: The Spalding Method for Teaching Speech, Spelling, Writing, and Reading - This is kind of the entirety of language arts rolled into one!

Finally, there's nothing like looking ahead to make you realize where your own education is... lacking.  So, I'll be picking up a copy of  Warriner's English Composition and Grammar : Complete Course for my own review.  I vaguely remember using this book in 7th grade, although "using" is probably a bit much.  More like we touched on it briefly and then scurried away.

Sound like a fun summer?  We'll have plenty of free play time, too.  No worries there. I just want to avoid that back-to-work shock in the fall.