Camp Half-Blood Week 1

It’s Kate’s last week of school!!!  I can’t wait for summer.  🙂  She’s not as enthused which is how I got roped into creating this whole Camp Half-Blood thing.  I can’t lie though, I have been having a blast coming up with the plans.  🙂

Basically, my plans boil down to:

  1.  Location: Camp Half-Blood
  2. God of the Week: Dionysus
  3. Field Trip: Zilker Science and Nature Center
  4. Craft: Lanyard lacing
  5. Food: BBQ and s’mores (and wine for mama!)

Our first week is going to be at Camp Half-Blood itself, so we’ll be doing some “campy” things.  Since we live on the surface of the sun in Texas, I wanted to do this week early in the summer so we could still go outside.  Also, it made the most sense as an intro week since the camp is their home base.  Our god of the week is Dionysus since, in the books at least, he’s been banished to the camp and is being forced to be the camp director.  I didn’t do a ton with him, but I did include a coloring sheet with some fun facts about him and our constellation of the week is the crown that he placed in the skies after he got married.

I figured that the nature center totally went along with the camp thing, so we’re going to go on a hike.  They also have done “dino bones” buried in the sand pit that I might make out to be monsters.  It’s also one of the locations for this cool outdoor adventure thing I found that I’ll try to blog more about later.  Lanyard lacing and s’mores just screamed summer camp to me.  Kate apparently tried the lacing thing at day camp last year and was unsuccessful, but I think she’s old enough now to love it.  If not, I’m going to play with it!  lol.

I’m not uploading the files for the book because about 1/2 of it is just drag and drop worksheets I found for free on the internet.  I talked a lot with Kate about what kinds of things she wanted included, and I think there’s a good mix of fun stuff and more academic stuff.  There’s a coloring sheet, a maze, a scramble, several writing prompts, some math problems, a logic puzzle, some information about the constellation of the week, mad libs, a word search and more.  Here are a few pics of some of the pages that I created.

cover pic

Here’s the cover.  I laminated it because I’m a huge dork.  🙂

img 3      img 2

I can’t wait to start!  Maybe I’ll even take pictures of our adventures and post a recap next Friday.  I mean, I wouldn’t hold your breath, but anything is possible, right?  😉

We’re Going to Camp Half-Blood!

You guys.  Do I ever have a treat for y’all!  I’ve been racking my brain trying to find ways to keep Kate amused this summer during our daily therapy rounds, and then it hit me.  She’s absolutely obsessed with the Percy Jackson books.  The first one is The Lightening Thief and if you haven’t read it you should!  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

You guys may remember from my Letter of the Week posts, but I love themes.  We only got through about letter “I” and we spent more like a month on each letter, but Kate and I had so much fun with them.  In fact, I’m considering pulling some of them out and reworking them for the babies.  🙂  But I digress.  Kate got me to read The Lightening Thief and I was forced to admit that she had found an actual, honest to goodness, good book series.  The books are set in the modern day, but the characters are “half-bloods”, which is to say they are the offspring of Greek gods/ goddesses and mortals.  And they go to summer camp.  SHUT UP AND TAKE MY  MONEY!  I bought them all for Kate and they’re all fabulous.  lol.

She regularly begs me to homeschool her for breaks and summer because she’s a weirdo  she loves school.  I typically tell her just to go play outside, but I do love me some Greek mythology.  Plus, the former teacher in me doesn’t want her to go all summer without doing any writing or math so I needed to come up with something.  Then I had the brilliant idea that we would spend each week in a different location from the book.  Metaphorically speaking of course.  (Although if someone wants to sponsor a RaptorMama trip to Greece, I’m all for it!)

A bit of background.  Last summer, I tried to get Kate to do one of those summer bridge books.  Despite her claims that she looooooooved school and haaaaaaaated summer and reaaaaaaally wanted to do worksheets everyday, she wasn’t really all that into it.    And I wasn’t all that into making her do boring worksheets every day.  Mia also has therapy 4 mornings a week, so I wanted something fun for Kate that she could do fairly independently.  Then it hit me.  Remember the road trip book I made Kate?  (Um, it just occurred to me that I probably never blogged about that.  Whoops.)  Well, anyway, I thought I could make her a little weekly workbook to go along with our location.  Win win.

I’ve decided to give our weeks a bit of structure.  Generally speaking, Mia has therapy from about 8-9 on Monday and Wednesday so there’s still a whole full day ahead of us.  On Tuesdays, she has therapy from 8-9 and then we go to an open gym class at Gymboree from 10-11 that’s about 30 minutes away.  And on Thursdays we have therapy from about 10-11:30.  Given that, I’ve decided that Mondays will be swimming with my mom at her neighborhood pool.  Wednesdays will be field trips related to the theme.  And Fridays we will “visit the oracle” AKA take the babies to story time at the library and check out some books.  Tuesdays and Thursdays will be craft days and cooking days.  This is all subject to change because we also have a ton of dr’s appointments in the summer.  Oh, and in the books they get a bead for each year that they’re at camp, but Kate and I are going to do a bead for each week because we’re awesome like that.  I ordered some plain wooden beads on Amazon and she’s going to choose how to paint them to reflect our adventures that week.

Oh!  And this also ties into my screen time plan.  Remember the summer boredom buster that I trialed over Spring Break?  (Maybe not because I only mentioned it in a goals post and never blogged about it?  Basically, she earned points for doing outside challenges, desk challenges, or badge work.)  It worked pretty well, but Kate informed me today that, while she still loves Girl Scouts, she doesn’t want to earn any more badges by herself because it wasn’t that fun without other girls.  After I stopped sobbing in the corner, I pulled myself together to come up with a new screen time plan.  My goal with the first one was two fold.  One, I didn’t want her begging me for screen time incessantly because I knew it would drive me crazy.  Two, I wanted to make sure she was spending time outside and time being creative before she got screen time.  (In case y’all don’t remember, I’m a mean mommy and Kate really only gets screen time on the weekends for about 30 minutes a day or so unless we’re having a family  movie night.)  I think the boredom buster reminded her of how much fun she can have outside, because now, 85%  of the time, she chooses to play in the backyard or practice volleyball instead of asking for screen time.  #winning  But, as a motivator to finish her booklets every week, she will earn 5 drachmas (fake gold coins I had from a St Patrick’s Day theme) for each 5 pages she completes.  (Each booklet has 20 pages.)  She can also earn drachmas for doing extra chores, being helpful with her siblings, or just being delightful in general.  I’m thinking 30 drachmas + a clean room will equal 3o minutes of screen time.  I’m also thinking that I’m waaaaaay overusing parenthesis in this blog post.

Check back on Friday and I’ll share what we’re doing for the first week of summer.  I can’t wait!!!

This post contains affiliate links.  I think.  😉

April Wrap Up/ March Goals

Le sigh.  It appears that I have become a once a month blogger at best.  Oh well.  Let’s see how I did with goals in April.

  1.  Finish cruise t-shirts.  Done!  I don’t think I’ll ever be a full time shirt maker, but I learned a lot and I think I could handle selling a few shirts on the side for some fun money.
  2. Finish blanket.  I had to knit like a crazy person, but I finished!  And she loved it.  🙂
  3. Onesie.  Done!  Again, super cute and my sister was so happy with it.
  4. Camp Half Blood shirts.  Haven’t done this yet, but I did get the Camp Jupiter one done and the shirts ordered.
  5. Finish scrapbooking December 2015. Done!  Yay!  I also got half of January 2016 done.  Look at me go!
  6. Project Life.  lol.  Well, the productivity had to come to an end sometime.  Maybe this month I’ll get some Project Life layouts done.
  7. Edit Pics.  I pulled them off my camera, but still haven’t edited them.  Did I mention that my children hate naps?
  8. Scrap 4 current layouts.  I did 2 from December 2016 so halfway there.
  9. Donate cookies.  Done!  And we lucked out and got to give the cookies to the same awesome guys who gave us our tour.  I <3 Girl Scouts.
  10. Sell Stroller.  Haven’t gotten this one done yet.

Holy crap!  How is it May???  Need some goals…

  1.  Camp Half Blood Shirts.  I need to design, cut, iron, and deliver these.
  2.  Sell Stroller.  Need to photograph this and put it on craigslist.
  3. Camp Half Blood plans.  Oh my.  Kate is now obsessed with Percy Jackson and thus Greek mythology so she has requested that we “homeschool” Greek mythology this summer.  After talking to her further, we’ve decided to spend each week focusing on a different location from the book.  Fingers crossed I can get this together because it has the potential to be awesome.
  4. I took my birthday money and t-shirt money and actually booked some professional pics for our family!  It’s with  photographer who’s work I adore and I am excited beyond words.  Now I just need to figure out outfits!
  5. Finish January 2016.  I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.
  6. Finish February 2016.  Pics are already printed so I just need to find some time to scrap.  🙂  I really really really want to get to a place where I’m only a year behind.  More than that and I start getting confused.
  7. Project Life.  I’d like to finish October and November 2016.  There’s no way I’m getting this one done so I’m not quite sure why I’m putting it down.  lol.
  8. Plan Girl Scout camp fire day.  Y’all.  This seemed like such a good idea at the time.  😉  It’s this Saturday so I need to buckle down and get this figured out.  Probably tonight.
  9. Cut out name vinyl.  My neighbor asked me to cut out some vinyl for her kids’ room and even bought the vinyl.  I just need to get it done.
  10. Get 10k steps a day.  RaptorDad surprised me with an apple watch!  Squeee!!!  I’ve been doing pretty good on getting my steps so far, but I need to keep this trend going.  🙂