Summer Week 5 ~ Swimming, Planning and Blessings

Another week of summer gone in a flash. Whoosh! The weeks go by so fast. This week was filled with blessings and fun.

Swimming ~ The girls finished off two weeks of swimming lessons at the pool. Goldilocks was promoted to level 5 at the beginning of this week. She seems to be holding her own. Little Red Riding Hood will have to stay in level 4 during the July session. Her strokes are great, but her confidence is poor. She becomes frightened in the middle of the deep end and generally refuses to go out there. We will be working on this before the next session.

Dive, Dive, Dive!

Camp ~ Tom Sawyer made it through camp with great success. We were pleased that he did so well even with two boys that are very difficult for him to deal with socially. (Those boys are best friends and tend to vacillate between including Tom Sawyer or being mean to him.) He learned a host of skills in camp this year.

• clay work
• painting
• making a headpiece 
• sanding and carving wood
• patience
• stage combat
• aerial arts
• self regulation
• dealing with difficult personalities and social situations
• negotiating
• rules and regulations
• 15 Mayan words and the Mayan alphabet
• Mayan games (balance and fine motor/gross motor skills)

I hope he learned the importance of wearing sun screen. He has the worst sun burn I have ever seen on my boy.

He made the wooden club, headpiece and volcano

Blessings ~ We had many blessings this week. The first was going to the Special Olympics Gymnastics class picnic. The kids had a blast. I enjoyed talking to other parents who understand what it is like to live daily with special needs children. I have spent the better part of the last few years with parents of "normal" kids, and it has been lonely at times. Finding this new group of friends is like "coming home". 

Secondly, while the girls were in swimming lessons, I was talking with another mother at the pool who I also had seen at our dance studio. It turns out that she is a middle school special education math teacher. A math teacher who LOVES math, special needs kids and a challenge. Boy, do I have the kid for her! I asked her if she would be interested in tutoring Goldilocks and she said YES! She is going to use a real life hands-on math curriculum which sounds like it will be an entirely different approach. We went for a meet and greet at her house today. Goldilocks starts next week. I hope and pray this is the nudge she needs.

Last but not least, I was blessed by so many on my birthday. Several friends and family called and sang Happy Birthday to me, a friend left a lovely homemade vase of flowers at my door, and my kids had a fun birthday party planned for me. I also took the girls to an antique shop in our town and found a school bell. I was so excited and it was just the right price. It has a perfect sound. I will have fun ringing in the new school year with it.

On the Blog ~ I posted my shopping list for next school year here.

Blessings, Dawn