Best Books For Beginning Readers at Camp Mom

My two girls are in Ohio visiting their cousins so it's just me and my 7-year-old-going-into-2nd grade son who opted to stay home instead of attending day camp this week. I thought I'd try out the Camp Mom schedule I posted on, but I find that we don't ever have a full day of unscheduled time and also that I can't keep to a set routine. Still, it was helpful to switch in and out of the different modules. Here's my Camp Mom diary. How is your Camp Mom going if you are doing this too?

Camp Mom Monday

We ended up with a play date extravenganza. 8 am to 10 am at my house to help out my mom friend Julie with her dental appointment. Then we switched from 10 am to 1 pm at her house so that I could volunteer for the Teacher Appreciation Lunch at the middle school.

Then a play date with twins from 1 pm o 4 pm. An hour of screen time for my son while I met with my new intern for my ILoveNewton.com blog (yay! Vlogging on the way!), then a half hour from 5pm to 5:30to meet the dog sitter who will board my dog.

Dinner, bath, chapter book and picture books, and bed. He read part of Magic Tree House Dragon of the Red Dawn to me and I read Dinotrux to him. He loved the cutout cards in the back of Dinotrux. Dinosaurs and trucks are a good combination! Summer reading should be fun, so I do most of the heavy lifting.

 

Camp Mom Tuesday

Daily Word Problems, 2nd Grade

We woke up and did Daily Math Problems. Miscalculation. 3 weeks of problems, 15 total, does not take an hour. More like 15 minutes. Some screen time. Then we ran errands: dog park for a mile hike so our dog can run off-leash, bank to get cash, Staples to get large labels for my Summer Reading List giveaway.

We scored some great sticks at the dog park to make into a bow and arrow set plus a karate inspired Bo Staff. Used a knife and rubber bands to make the bow. It worked surprisingly well and my son shot "arrows" outside for a half hour.

After lunch, we played a two square and a game we invented called soccer tennis. The object is the defend the tiny net using just a tennis racquet. My son had his guitar lesson for my son (1 hour), then we rushed to PinkBerry for promised treat I bribed him with to go to the dog park. He attended a birthday party at a video arcade place that took up the rest of the evening which included pizza for dinner. I shopped at the nearby mall for my husband's upcoming birthday since I failed to set up a car pool. Then a little TV for my son while my husband and I ate dinner.

My son watched another hour of TV before we forced him upstairs for his bedtime routine. I coaxed him into reading some new picture books and found we both found them to be extremely entertaining even on the second go round. We did a few more weeks of math to land at week 15  and then bed for both of us. Camp Mom is exhausting!

Camp Mom Wednesday

No go on the morning math. That's ok. I like to front load it during the summer because we tail off as the summer winds down. My son watched TV for half a hour before donning his cleats for a 1/2 hour soccer lesson. I ran to the post office during his lesson to mail off the Magic Tree House winners from my Summer Reading List giveaway. His coach gave us all kinds of ideas for the sweltering 100 degree day. My son latched onto Lemonade Stand and got the neighbor boys involved in a Huckleberry Finn-like move.  Four hours of Lemonade Stand yielded about $20. Ran out of lemons though. I had to run out for my annual physical but my husband stepped in.

After lunch, I thought I'd try that baking soda and colored vinegar experiment I found on Pinterest.

Bonus points for using the old freezer baking soda boxes upon realizing I didn't have enough. Two boxes of baking soda was plenty. My mistake is not to have medicine dropper. I used a baster which worked fine but blasted so much vinegar (to dramatic effect) that we were done pretty quickly. My son loved it but it only took about fifteen minutes to complete. I made red, yellow and blue dyed vinegar so that he could also mix colors just to throw a little art theory into the mix. He didn't seem to notice that part of it though.

My son wanted more science experiments, so I thought I'd try Gloop but didn't have enough corn starch. Luckily more boys came over and I sent them down into the basement to play which is nice and cool as it's about 100 degrees outside right now. He played inside, outside and across the street for a few more hours until dinner.

I still need to sneak in some math today plus get him to practice his guitar. I'll try after dinner.

Note to self. Stock up on: lemons, baking soda, white vinegar, food coloring, baby oil, flour, corn starch. If I can find the baby oil, I'll try Moon Sand with 8 cups of flour and 1 cup of baby oil for OUTSIDE play tomorrow. I guess you can add in food coloring too.

Notes from my husband: girls definitely run a more hygienic lemonade stand compared to boys. The boys did not keep track of used cups and tried to stir with their fingers. We have nice neighbors who did not accept change and even donated money to the till.

Bedtime picture books my son selected:

 

Camp Mom Thursday

I have a coffee date so that my new Mom Friend who is on a Fullbright from Korea can meet my Korean-American friend Helen whose father runs a university in Korea that my friend knows by reputation. My new Mom Friend teaches English Literature and is probably the only human on the planet is willing to talk about Asian American children's lit all day. Too bad she departs for Korea next month!

The coffee was great and my friend Helen regaled us with tales of middle school behavior from alcohol poisoning to casual "hook ups" and how to prep your kids from succumbing to these pitfalls.

Next stop library. My son wants to get a particular Magic Tree House book that we don't own plus a few other books, so trip to the library is in order. When we got there, he decided that he's done with Magic Tree House and asked for the graphic novel section instead. We also realized he never got his own library card. We left with these books checked out under his new card.

Browsing the Beginning or Early Chapter Books yielded this:

He read the Hardy Boys Zombies book while eating lunch. He couldn't put it down, he said it was so good. Then he started on the Knights of the Lunch Table which he had to return before finishing at his school library. We also ran to the grocery store to buy flour, baking soda, corn starch and baby oil for more Pinterest science experiments.

It's sweltering outside. Time for some downtime. I thought about having him do the Gloop experiment but was too lazy when contemplating the clean up.

Ugh ... that downtime morphed into 2+ hours of screen time but I worked furiously online until our mommy/son dinner date with two other mom friends and their kids. I think I had a few too many glasses of sangria though. We got back late but my son decided to play guitar and then read a little with me. We are now almost done with our Magic Tree House book Dragon of the Red Dawn.

 

Camp Mom Friday

My son is definitely a night owl. He went to bed at 11:15 pm and got up at 10:15 am. I was up at 8 am with a slight hangover but worked on the computer, dazed and confused. When he woke up, we read two chapters of his Max Finder library book. I solved the first mystery which is rare for me and he solved the second one. Usually we get stumped half the time. We did a week of the school math problems but only the ones he could do in his head, skipping (ALWAYS!) the one that makes you make calendar for July.

My husband is free today and offered to take my son to Chuck E Cheese's for lunch and video games. I tagged along. We usually take the kids once a year during the summer when there are less viruses. For $40, we got a pretty unappetizing lunch and 560 tickets which translates into a goody bag of small plastic toys.

I need to meet my mom friend Ann to give her Twitter lessons for Darby Road. My son is making Moon Sand using 8 cups of flour and 1 cup of baby oil. This entertains him for about an hour. Then it's TV time before we have to leave for a pool party.

Camp Mom for one week is ... exhausting. Screen time for him equals screen time for me. Next week I could put him in a soccer/swimming day camp but he has opted to stay home for another week while his sisters are at soccer camp. Should I make him go? I'm torn.

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