Summer Ideas?

 Summer's here!  I'm proud of my kids for finishing their homeschooling well.  We finished last Thursday.  Now what?  We have to be creative when we are overseas and there are few activities for children here.  I plan to go and visit our local friends here more this month before Ramadan.  Besides that, I am trying to brainstorm ideas for what my kids could do:

• Swim. We got a metal frame pool from a friend who had to go back to the U.S.  The kids love it.  Our roof is too rough so we have put it in our shower room where it just fits.  It's a good thing we have two shower rooms.  It's big enough that our kids can swim back and forth a little.
• Do arts and crafts.  I bought some of Klutz books for the kids to do.  They love them.  In another post, I would like to post some good websites for art/craft projects.  Does anyone know of any good websites?
• Play piano.  I never got to teaching my kids piano during the school year.  I have been trying to teach them a little.  
• Summer reading.  Maybe we can start a book club!  If anyone knows of any good books, we can make a summer reading list.  Those available on Kindle are especially helpful.
• Teach the kids how to type.  I saw some websites for learning how to type which seem ok.  I may just decide to buy some software if that is not enough.
• Read through the Kurdish reading books.  I got these from the public school nearby but I never got around to having the kids read these.  I want the kids to keep up with the language.
• Maybe get kids together and play organized sports or do exercise together?

Does anyone have any other ideas?

Hope you all have a great summer!

Oregon Trail Lapbook

I have been supplementing my American history with lapbooks this year.  We are currently doing a great lapbook that is on the following website:  http://www.lapbooklessons.com/OregonTrailLapbook.html

It's been fun and they include links for information.  I recommend finding other websites as well for information and bookmarking them for the kids to put on the lapbooks instead of just letting them surf the internet for information.  Otherwise, this will be too time consuming.

Question about Teaching Science to Two Kids

Right now, I am in the middle of Sonlight Science D (Biology). We are a little behind because of our year in K public school last year.  We’ve enjoyed this science the most so far.  Now I’m trying to decide if I should finish it this summer and then start Sonlight science E (Electricity, Magnetism, and Astronomy) next school year.  The other option is to finish the second half of Sonlight D Biology next school year and do Apologia Botany or Zoology the second half of the year.

I looked at the Sonlight Science E books for next year and went into a bit of a shock!  Noah loves science and he loves a challenge but I am concerned that it would be too abstract/complex for Hannah.  I have been teaching my kids science together but now I wondering if I should teach them separately.  Do you have any advice for me?  How did your kids like the Science E Sonlight?  Should I teach Hannah something else?  I have a friend who has some Apologia science books that she is not using.  Has anyone had experience with Apologia and what do you think about it? The only thing is that I do not want to have to do separate experiments for both of my kids.  I wonder if I would be able to teach them well if I do completely different things.  Noah is in fourth grade right now and Hannah is in second grade right now.

Any advice would be great!  :)

Borrowing Ebooks

I am so excited that I found out that the Plano library in Texas is now doing ebook lending for Kindle!  My kids were so happy!  I think they are going to allow more books to be lent on Kindle.  Most books are available on Kindle.  Some are in epub format which you need to upload and convert so that you can read it on Kindle.  The website for that is epub2mobi.com.

I think they will have this available in more cities in the U.S.  This should happen in other countries as well.