Summer fun and reading!

Well, our summer is off to a great start (and I hope it keeps up!)!  T-ball season has ended, and our little family of four had a fantastic time making some new friends and enjoying the weather.  We were actually sad to see the season end we were all having so much fun!  We have spent some time at the pool, when we had a few really warm days the past couple of weeks, and we're hoping to get in a couple more this week when it heats up again.

The kids and I headed to NoVa this past week when my mom surprised us with gas money for the trip!  We had a great time!  We were bummed we weren't able to visit my husband's family in Va. Beach or our friends in Lynchburg, but we enjoyed the time we had with my family and one of my friends from high school and her family.  We were able to celebrate Father's Day with my dad and we celebrated my sister's birthday with a tour around a couple of wineries!  If you are ever in the Warrenton area, I highly recommend taking the whole family to Pearmund Cellars - beautiful setting, lawn games for the whole family, fire pits, lots of space for picnicking and running the kids, and the wine is really good too!  Here's a link to their website:
http://www.pearmundcellars.com/

This week finds our son participating in sports camp at a local church in the mornings, as well as VBS (Vacation Bible School) with a couple of friends from t-ball in the evenings.  He's going to be a very busy, happy and tired little boy come Saturday!  Yea!  Next month he will start theatre camp, which my husband is also helping with.

On top of all this, we have started our own reading program, since I couldn't find one in the area (our local public library had an adult reading program, but no kids?! I'm not impressed with our local library; very disappointed!).  So, here's the deal:  our son needs to read 12 Mom approved chapter books (he's chosen to go with the Magic Tree House series) by the time the Little League World Series starts August 16.  If he does read 12 chapter books by then, my husband will take him to the LLWS for a day and get a t-shirt.  Any chapter books he reads past 12 earns him $1/book that he can spend however he likes while at the LLWS.  He has two charts: one to track the chapters in the books and one to track the books.

                                                          The chapter tracking chart.        

                                                          The book tracking chart.

Each chapter he reads earns him a sticker on The Line Up chart (we're working the baseball theme!).  Every time he finishes a book, he adds a Pokemon character sticker (he loves Pokemon) to the baseball diamond, where each book is a position on the field (we needed to take some liberties with baseball positions to get to 12!).  If he reads more than 12, then those characters will form the dugout and we'll be able to keep track of how much extra he gets for the day at the games.  Since our son is a visual and tactile/kinesthetic learner, this is a great tool for him!  I also created 3 individual month calendars so he can cross off each day that has past and can see how much time he has left to reach his goal, again in keeping with his particular learning styles.  So far, he has read 2 books and is almost done with his 3rd.  Considering all the things we've been doing so far this summer, I think he's off to a pretty good start!

We also added a challenge for him: reading in his head.  Since he's been learning to read, he's been reading out loud, which is age and skill appropriate.  We feel he has reached a point that he is good enough of a reader to start learning to read silently to himself.  However, we also want to make sure he's really understanding what he's reading when he reads like this.  So, since the chapters are relatively short in these books, when he has finished a chapter, we skim it to get the bulk of what happened (takes about a minute, if that) then ask him questions about what happened.  If he struggles to answer our questions, we have him go back and read it again, sometimes out loud, to figure out what really happened in the story.

We are all excited about this reading challenge, and seeing our son reach his goal and go to the LLWS!  I hope our little program has inspired you to create your own!  The goal is to make summer reading fun, yet challenging and meaningful.  Take your child's skill level, learning styles and interests into account, as well as how much time you think they will be able to devote to the program.  Make the goal(s) realistic and attainable, and the reward something that will really stay with them as a great summer memory. Happy summer reading!
*Post publishing note:  Thank you to a friend of mine in the area for sending me the link to the local public library's summer reading program.  It appears they posted their program on their website a couple of days after I went looking for it! I think we'll stick with our program for this summer, since we've already started it!*

"Home" is...?

As kids, home was where our caregivers, bed and favorite toys were.  As college students, home was where we went to during breaks (if we weren't going off into the big world).  As adults, I think the word "home" has many different definitions.

In the past 12 years, I have lived in 7 different places: Alexandria, VA; Va. Beach, VA; Detroit, MI; South Bend, IN; Brevard, NC; Lynchburg, VA and now PA.  Out of those 7 places, I can honestly say I could only call 4 of them "home".  And that number doesn't include Portland, OR, which I also consider "home", even though the longest I've ever lived there was 3 weeks (in kindergarten!).  What is it about those places that made them home to me?  I've done a lot of thinking on this and here is what I have come to believe my definition of "home" is.

Home is:

Where your loved ones are.
Where you can be who you are, without fear of judgement.
Where you have community.
Where your social, emotional and basic human needs are met.

So, why did only 4 out of 7 (plus Portland) make the list?  Because only 4 out of 7 (plus Portland) met all four criteria.  I grew up in Alexandria, so that was my first definition of home.  Virginia Beach, even though I only lived there for 9 months, had family (my husband's), we had close friends that formed our community, I could be "me" with those friends and family, and all my social, emotional and basic needs were met.  Same with Detroit, South Bend and Portland.  Even though Detroit and South Bend didn't have direct access to extended family, I had my husband (and our son was born in South Bend) and friends who became our family.  That's not to say that the other 3 places didn't meet some of the criteria, but to be considered home, in my mind, ALL the points need to be met.    I've been in PA less than a year, so the jury is still out, but right now, I can't call PA "home" just yet (the fracking is impeding on the basic human needs portion, so PA might be a lost cause, but we'll see) .

What's your definition of home?  Leave a comment if you like!