Our Summer So Far...

Summer is flying by too quickly! I can't believe I only have a few more weeks left with my little man before it's time for school to start again. We have been very busy this summer, but I'm not complaining. Most of our summer has been consumed with swimming lessons, but we've managed to do a lot more fun things as well.

First dip in the pool at Mr. Art and Mrs. Vera's house

(He hadn't started swimming lessons yet, hence the floaties.)

Probably one of my favorite things we've been able to do this summer is attend our local library's summer reading program. We love going to story time at the library and doing the crafts they send home each week. I'm a HUGE lover of books, so I'm hoping that Eli really develops a love of reading as well. 

One of the crafts was for Eli to write down one of his dreams and put it on his wishing star. I was actually quite surprised when he told me what he wanted to put on his star because Buzz Lightyear has been the favorite lately. 

A summer project of mine was to go through all of Eli's artwork from PreK-3 last year, take pictures of it all, and then decide what to keep, what to give away, and what to trash/shred. I saw an idea on Pinterest where you take pictures of your kid's artwork and make it into a book. This cuts down on the amount of paper you have to store year after year. Eli was more than willing to help me with the shredding part. He even found his headband from the 100th day of school and decided to wear it the rest of the day.

All of Eli's artwork from PreK-3

I've been pinning a lot of ideas of activities Eli and I can do at home this summer and one day we had an Activity Day. It was lots of fun! I loved going from one activity to another with Eli.

Our first activity was this baking soda and vinegar activity. You fill a baking dish with baking soda and then put food coloring in different cups of vinegar. You use a medicine dropper to drop vinegar into the baking soda. Eli LOVED this activity. The next time we do it though I'm going to find a smaller medicine dropper that way this will last a little bit longer :)

After that activity was so successful, we moved on to another art project that I'd wanted to do with Eli for quite some time-condensed milk painting. I put some condensed milk into an empty ice tray and then added a few drops of food coloring. It was very easy to paint with, didn't drip, and was very glossy! It's not something you're going to keep forever, but it was definitely fun for the day!

Next, we decided to trace the outline of Eli's body and make a "Paper Eli."

We concluded our Activity Day with Squid Dogs. Eli enjoyed making the Squid Dogs, but didn't really enjoy eating them. It was something new though!

I love summer and I love spending one on one time with my little man. I can't wait to spend more time with him and do more fun projects!