Summer Dispatch 1: So Much to Do

And then there was One. Week. Left.

We are a week from my daughter heading to second grade. The summer has flown by.

Last summer, she enjoyed a week of Vacation Bible School, enjoyed the ocean for a few days, went to her first art camp, and fell in love with the world of Harry Potter.

This summer, she spent a week at VBS and once again enjoyed time in the ocean. In the past month, she has also revisited the first five Potter books in audiobook form (we’re holding off on volumes 6 and 7 until she’s a little older), and she continues to sleep in.

But a lot is different.

1. She took swimming lessons at the YMCA. While she didn’t learn to swim, she did learn to be less afraid of the water. Plus, she made new friends. 
2. Speaking of which…she’s had playdates with school friends and proved herself capable of building friendships with kids she meets at libraries, etc. 
3. She’s part of 4-H for the second year, but unlike last year, she’s doing projects this time. She completed her yearbook for her garden project last week (she helped plant, grow, and harvest a mixture of vegetables and flowers), and she’s been practicing leading her bucket calf (a growing Holstein steer) in anticipation of her first showing season. I saw her learn how to chip away at a pretty thick writing project a little daily, and she’s shown real bravery in dealing with her growing calf.
4. She attended her first drama camp, made new friends, and honed her intuitive comedic timing. I developed a routine of conducting a post-camp interview where my daughter would film herself while I asked her questions about the day. It gave her a chance to strut the performance skills she was learning, and I probably got more details out of her about how the day went than I would have otherwise.
5. She’s playing basketball for a co-ed YMCA league, a team where she is one of only two girls. This is her first time playing an organized sport, and she’s willingly practiced and shown marked improvement. We thought she would be a decent athlete. She’s proved our hypothesis correct.
6. She has started listening to audio CDs (we bought her a cheap cd player at Goodwill), and she’s gone through plenty of books from the Spy School and How to Train Your Dragon series. At the table each evening, we’ve had her read portions of the Bible too. You can tell she listens to a lot of audiobooks. It’s not just that she can read lots of words beyond her grade level. It’s that she reads with real energy and precision. 

There have been a couple of random day trips to the local zoo and science center and plenty of visits to local libraries. 

Every single day, she does at least one thing that frustrates me (e.g., a histrionic reaction to ill-fitting socks) and one thing that endears her to me (e.g., using the word “situated” as a way to describe what she’s going to do with her horses when she gets back to her room). 

I have more specific content to post here, but this is a reminder to myself (as much as anyone else) about what she’s been up to during the last eight weeks. I’m proud of her.