Stephen’s Lake and 1st Day of Summer Break

I took the kids out to Stephens Lake to celebrate the first full day off of school (and also Friday, but I didn’t take any pics then!) Not a ton of photos from our first visit of the year, either, because it was 3 kids vs one parent. 

James woke up in the 5 o'clock hour, so excited for the first day of summer. He came to our room and wanted me to read a chapter from The Disappearance of Emily H., a book featured on the TV show Ghostwriter, which I'd been reading to him at night, but I told him was going to have to give me until 6am. Since I wasn't reading, he wanted me to teach him how to do stop-motion videos, but I explained that had to wait until 6 as well. So he fed the dog and brushed his teeth and entertained himself until 6:00 on the dot when I read the promised chapter, ha!

After that, I downloaded Stop Motion Studio, we watched a tutorial together, and he was off. He made several stop-motion videos, which he then sent to Sam. 

I like the beard monster, who first insults Sam’s beard and then eats the message:

There are several more cute ones, mostly of toys moving around. I’ll try to make a separate post about them. James is also signed up for a one-day stop-motion animation class in July.

We ate a big breakfast and spent an hour and a half or so out at the lake, which has a big nice splash pad and a small to medium algae filled swimming area (not pictured). Leah’s “swimmin hat” is getting small!

James's swimming shirt is snug, too! He has more :)

We didn’t bring any toys, so Leah was forced to use her hat to scoop the water.

James pretended the fountain was bars trapping him. 

James and Amelie got to press the button to re-start the water fountains (they go off automatically after 20 minutes). James remarked that he never used to be able to make it before the big kids, but now HE was one of the big kids. 

Before and after the outing, Amelie spent a lot of time reading in her room and playing outside in the front and backyard - making clover chains. 

This is what I was most proud of: Amelie and James rode their bikes all the way around the big loop in our neighborhood! Amelie said the “big hill” was terrifying but fun. I assisted Leah around the block, but she's not yet up for the whole big loop (which is over a mile). 

Finally, we weeded the garden and talked with the neighbor over the fence. We also made a a list of several other activities we’d like to do over the summer and talked about continuing with the math curriculum - Amelie is just over halfway done and James is about a third finished with the ST Math app that they’ve been using and then we have several blank pages left in their workbooks if they’d like a break from the app. They had a full first day of break, I'd say!