School’s Out—Now what should we do?

It used to be summer school was kind of an automatic for special ed. Of course, budget cuts have kinda taken that out of the mix. It’s now primarily for more severe kids – which I get. They need it more. But that still leaves me with the “What the heck do I do with them???” dilemma. I’m sure you’ve been there. Oh brother, now I have to come up with ideas to keep them entertained, learn something, and not have them drive me crazy. At some point, Bella may be ready for a sleep away camp in a few years, but I don’t see Kennedy and Alex being able to do that anytime soon, without either Andy or myself there, which kind of defeats the purpose of sending them.

Last year, I put them in a couple of day camps. There were a few at Kennedy’s tae kwon do that were half-day camps. That was awesome!! I’m going to do that again. They moved and jived and tae kwon do’d to their little hearts’ content, and were downright calm by the time I picked them up at lunch. It only took four hours of nonstop cardio.

I am thinking about the zoo, too. They have little classes at just about every zoo in the country, and if you have a zoo membership, you get to go to a number of other zoos for free or reduced price. Alex loves the zoo – he’s really into all the facts and shopping. Kennedy just wants to sing the animals to sleep with a lullaby – like the Komodo dragon. Don’t ask me why. Bella lags behind a lot. Then again, it’s not totally her fault. She has little legs and the Los Angeles Zoo manages somehow to be uphill, both ways. By the time you’re making that final stretch back to the entrance, you find yourself wondering how the heck you’re having to climb what feels like Mount Everest when you had do the same thing walking in. I thought it was just me being melodramatic, but anyone that’s been there will agree with me on that one. It’s a good zoo, though. The habitats are big with lots of information, and they have a new (air conditioned!) children’s center and animal nursery.

But for academics… I worry about them losing everything they learned that year. Yeah, you say you’re going to buy the computer program, or book, and stick to it, but with summer, stuff always seems to just happen. We are trying the summer program for Kumon, the tutoring center down the way. They’ve worked wonders with Kennedy this past school year in getting caught up, her attention span is amazing there. Honestly, I don’t know who that kid is. She’ll sit there for like half an hour, when she can’t focus for more than 5 minutes in class with several prompts from her aide. So, worth a shot. And I have the feeling if I’m paying for it, and we have a scheduled time to go, it will be easier to stick with it and the kids respond much better to the structure of it.

And here I thought homework was done for a bit. Yeah, right.