Snap, snap, whistle, whistle, look what I can do?

A couple of weeks ago, Renee asked for feedback on what kinds of academic skills our kids will be working on over the summer.

Here are some of the  important skills my kids have decided to work on, with my approval: whistling, finger-snapping, jumping rope, doing cartwheels and shuffling cards.

My son has almost perfected card shuffling. On Sunday morning, I was shuffling Uno cards for our third game of the morning when he said he wanted to try. I demonstrated. He tried. And tried. And tried. Until he did it. The look of accomplishment on his face rivaled any he showed me during the school year.

That's when we came up with our list of things to accomplish during the summer. To the above list, we could also add drawing a star and riding without training wheels (my daughter) and learning to play poker and cooking spaghetti (my son). There are a couple of things the kids might teach me, as well. They can both wink on each side and curl their tongues. I can't.

This past school year was no doubt a year of accomplishments. Perfect spelling tests. Complicated written and oral presentation projects. Long division. ABCs and 123s.

Now that it's summer, I don't mind that the kids are taking a break from worksheets and report writing, and I have more patience and time for teaching things like crossing your eyes and snapping your fingers. These are useful life skills, right? How else could I go, "(Snap, snap), go clean your room!"

What skills will your kids be mastering this summer?

Comments

[Phyllis]

You can tell your kids curling your tongue is a genetic trait. You won't be able to learn it. Maybe you can put something else on your list like...more afternoon naps?

[Renee]

This totally made me smile, I remember being a kid and learning how to shuffle/bridge a deck of cards. My kids still think I'm a magician since I can do that. I'll keep them in the dark on that one a little bit longer...

My oldest is really working on riding w/o training wheels. She's finally nailed the monkey bars and is shredding her hands daily now learning if she can skip some bars.

It is fun to work on physical skills. Judging from the lack of comments on my academics post, I guess we're in good company if we take the summer off from homework too ;-)