Summer School With Fox

       Summer has come! So it is take a break time from all the hard stuff and do some other stuff! Who am I kidding, we are still doing math which is the hard stuff and creative writing. Writing in any form according to Fox is the worse thing imaginable but hey, we have to get those skills somehow! I really did want it to be all boyish for Fox this summer and to do his own thing apart from his sister. The Thinking Tree which I use throughout the year came up with a Wild Wilderness Adventure Handbook. It is like a survival guide, science book and i thought it be perfect for Fox. It focuses on survival skills and outdoor safety. 

      He is going to learn all about different plants in the outdoors which can be pretty helpful if you are ever on a camping trip! How to build fires, make shelters, purify water, first aid in the wild and a ton of other stuff! My plan is at the end of summer try to get someone to take him actually camping or I may just let him hit the back yard and forbid him to come in for the night! He wants to have me drop him off at the river for two days but I am not so sure about that right now. Regardless he will have a great summer learning and having fun. 





        This journal did not include any math and math is something we work on year round so I added Life Of Fred Financial Choices and The Daring Book for Boys in Business to give him a business math type course. A few months back we participated in the Junior Makers Market where he sold his homemade cupcakes and he has been asking to do it again so this seemed like a nice math course to take. I added the Write Your Own Adventure Stories to get him writing. I thought it fit nicely with the boys summer idea. He really needs to work on his writing and grammar so this is a fun way to do that. So even in summer when it is "take a break" the kids are still working on everything they would during the school year just in fun ways. Ways they will hopefully find interesting! besides the books he will work through he picked two other books to read to start off when those are finished he has others to pick from as well. 

  
        I also had gotten him some science kits to play around with when he decides to do them. These are by the Daring Book for Boys and I found them on E-Bay. There is Chemistry and Electronics. Two things Fox loves to mess with so they should be a win for him. 

       The 72 hour Survival Kit came from Amazon I believe and Fox is really excited to open that and check out the MRE I bought for him. He is always talking about Military life so I thought that would be a fun bonus for him as well. It also fit into the survival theme as well! 

  
        I have pdf files of many of the Thinking Tree Journals so I just printed some pages for him to write summaries of the books he reads and as well as a designated spot for any math work he does. 

       He wasn't sure about the book for writing adventures stories as usual he was paranoid over spelling and such until i said look, we can work on spelling later just get some ideas down. After that he did get pretty creative with the activities in the book. My hope is that after summer is over he can get pretty creative in his writing without having story type starters. 

          Now onto the FUN!! He gets to open his goodies! As I called it he went to the MRE first! The cool thing is he could tell me all types of facts and such about the way soldiers have eaten in the past, how and MRE came to be and so many things he has seen from all the documentaries he has watched. If I had given him a test I bet he wouldn't be able to recall a single thing. Yet, sitting here with mom he was able to give me a thirty minute history lesson about so much! 

  
       Next he went for his box of goodies and had to go through each and every thing reading all about them. 
       

       He was amazed at packs of water! LOL he thought that was just so funny. It also had ration ideas on the amounts one should use if ever needed. 

       He also cannot wait to set up this tent in a bag. I am sure he will read all about that in his journal when he gets to building shelters!

       He is also eager to try out his filter straw!

  
       He was so eager to try out his emergency ration food bars he even made me eat one. I was kinda surprised that it was OK. It was a bit powdery and not something I would want to eat on a regular basis but they weren't like liver and onion gross so that was cool to find out!

       He isn't crazy about the writing and drawing in his journal but he is being a trooper doing it. He started off learning about the different plants. Which ones are poisonous and which ones can he eat that sort of thing. 

       We also got a new weed eater and he spent over an hour outside playing with it cutting everything he possibly could until the battery died. He told me it is his new favorite toy! I will never understand boys but whatever works!

       That is about it for his first week. So happy summer learning!