Summer Accomplishments

While our summer was largely full of relaxing play time, fun events, and various travels, the teacher in me also made sure that Jaden and Cody kept up some important learning too! Thankfully, the boys are like curious little sponges right now, so doing these extra activities didn't take too much coercing from Mommy! Here are a few of the boys' summertime accomplishments.

Tying Shoes

We tried learning this feat a couple times during the boys' kindergarten year but it was met some frustration, so we didn't push it. Thankfully, the skill clicked with both boys fairly quickly this summer! After proving that they could independently tie Mommy and Daddy's shoes, the boys got to go shoe shopping and pick out new shoes with laces. Jaden and Cody were SO proud of their new shoes and couldn't wait to wear them to school.

Reading

Nearly every day this summer, Cody and Jaden read an easy reader book aloud to either Daddy or Mommy to help strengthen their independent reading. They grew a lot as readers over the summer! Also, each day the boys listened as Mommy or Daddy read chapter books out loud to them. They listened to audiobooks anytime we were in the car too. Jaden and Cody absolutely LOVE listening to stories! They would always beg for "just ONE more chapter," and that is an offer that Mommy can rarely refuse. :) We kept a running list of all the books that we read for their school's summer reading challenge. We were so excited by the end of the summer when we realized that together we had read 100 chapter books!!

Writing

This next accomplishment was something that the boys jumped into all on their own. Both Jaden and Cody decided that they wanted to write and illustrate their own chapter book series. They worked so hard on these books and came up with some pretty fun, clever stories (in Mommy's totally unbiased opinion). Jaden wrote several stories about a boy named Peter. His stories were quite lengthy and his pictures were often very detailed too.

Cody definitely was an eager writer this summer! He wrote a TON of books! His longest series was a set of books about a character named Ninja Boy, who always ran into some bad guy/creature that he had to battle. I loved how each one of his books followed a similar plot pattern. Cody's drawings were always pretty clever too. I got a kick out of another one of Cody's series about the adventures of two phones named Google and "Ulexa." What a creative young man! :)

Playing Piano

 Early in the summer, I started giving piano lessons to Jaden and Cody and was surprised with their enthusiasm to learn. It probably helps that they've seen and heard quite a number of kids take lessons from Mommy over the years, and now it's finally their turn! Here are some samplings of their songs-- first from Jaden and then Cody.