First Official Non-School Day - CONT.

....ah.  Much better.  So, where was I?  Oh yeah.  First day of summer.

Today is a trial run for my daily schedule.  I am weird and I like it.  Deal.  So I need schedule of things to do and when to do them every day.  So what?  Its not for everyone but it works for me and quite honestly, I was lost the last four years without it.  So the past week I have considered it, created it, and edited it.  Today I get to test drive it.

Already I know I will need to adjust some times and events but that is to be expected.  For instance, with this new blog I woke up and decided to start today (yeah, like I didn't have enough going on already) I will need to set aside an hour in the evening to make sure I have posted the events for the day - that'll probably be after the girls are passed out and the house is quite.  Aside from that so far things look good with my schedule.  I got up at 4:11am (yeah, we don't sleep-in around here), got hubs packed for work, sent him off for the day, and am currently doing some computer work.  I love being organized.  I hate chaos.  Which is probably one of many reasons why a daily schedule works best for me.

But I digress - today's schedule.  That's what I was going to talk about.

Not a whole lot is planned for today.  Our biggest event is taking the girls to the local library to get new library cards for all three of us.  Every week I have marked out 1 hour on Thursdays to go to the library and get new books for the week.  I'm thinking I may need to set aside 2 hours but we'll see how that goes.  My plan is to get and keep the girls reading this summer with a 30 minute block of time set aside in the evening.  On Thursdays we will get new books to read, read them all week long, and on Wednesdays the girls will do an oral/written book report on at least one of the books they read.  It would be awesome to have them read two books a week but since Jessica is only 4 and Samantha is barely 7 it may be a tall order to fill (depending on the kind of books they choose).

Book reports will be done on Wednesdays (didn't I already say that?  Oh well) at their TaeKwonDo class (ha, I didn't say that already).  For every book report given they can earn their way to a prize.  They can then turn in those prized for better prizes.  Its like a pyramid of prizes they can earn all the way to their very own samurai sword.

Now slow down.  Don't pop a vein thinking "OH !!! How could any mother possibly consider giving a child a sword?"  Well, I have considered it - and carefully I mind you.  That said, HELL NO MY GIRLS AREN"T GETTING A SWORD !! At least not now anyway.  The way the TKD (TaeKwonDo) Academy is set up the girls will be nearly adults before they ever got close to earning a sword.  So relax.  There won't be any sword fighting going on here for a while.  However, Samantha did, and Jessica will be cutting her birthday cake with a real samurai sword (held on very tightly by the local Master), so be prepared to see pics of those later on.

Again I digress (get used to it).  My goal here is to help Samantha improve her reading skills while encouraging Jessica to read.  Both girls love and adore books which is evident by the "library" they have so having enough books is not the problem.  See, our beloved Samantha has a Learning Disability.  APD, or Auditory Processing Disorder (more to come on that in another post).  So getting Samantha to read on her expected reading level is a must if she is going to maintain a passing average in school.  And Jessica is just learning how to read so it will be good practice for her.  And I used to love to read so I really need to get back into it as I was a lot less stressed when I did read.

I want this summer to be fun and full of opportunities for the girls to learn as much as they can.  If I do it right then Samantha will have an easier transition into 2nd grade and Jessica will be one of a handful of kindergarteners who already know how to read before her first official day of school.

Well, the day is creeping up fast so I need to get this test drive in gear.  Next up - wake the girls and start some laundry.  Then off to the library followed up with cleaning the basement, and then a full afternoon of TKD for all three of us.

I'll post the days events this evening so look forward to seeing what books the girls chose, how my schedule worked out, what we got accomplished today, and what new things we all learned.