nesting dolls, and feeling done

This week we read a fact-families called "Nesting Dolls" from the Enki Education Grade 2 Math curriculum. The story is intended to be used as a reawakening of the fact-families work we did in 1st grade. It's a fun story, very clear in intent (the two children stacking up to "equal" their Mother), but I feel like I did it at the wrong time. (J's story drawing and verse are way better than mine, so I won't even both posting mine.) I just feel like we're "done" for the year, and starting a reawakening block now doesn't really make sense.

Zoo Boy's drawing and verse (the first two lines).

Obviously, I didn't realize I'd feel this way, otherwise I'd have saved the story for the fall. If I hadn't read it, we'd probably just bind our good books this coming week and call the year done. But I'm feeling like we need another week's worth of work to tie in with the story before we can just stop, otherwise I'll have the feeling that I left it unfinished, and I don't think the kids will have gotten as much mileage from the story. So we'll press on for another week, then bind the books the following.

The kids are also feeling ready to stop. I've been meeting with new resistance from Zoo Boy as I start singing our transition song to start our day. He's just done with it all, he feels the call of summer and the need to expand into a more relaxed schedule. And J is knee-deep into his summer project already -- he's playing Oliver Twist in a local production of the musical "Oliver!", and rehearsals got underway this week, 3 evenings a week. So his focus is primarily elsewhere these days. He's also very much looking forward to some summer dancing, which starts up in a couple of weeks.

I'll post more about our summer plans as we shift into that mode, but we're not dropping everything entirely as that wouldn't serve us well. Instead we'll shift into a more relaxed rhythm and drop those things that require much planning and follow through. We're keeping some practice work, as Zoo Boy is not at a point of comfort with handwriting yet that I'm willing to just let that be for months on end, and I know he won't write on his own without a bit of structured support. I'm also drizzling some math practice into the summer, as I did last year, so that their skills are where they need to be to start some new material in the fall. And I'm going to be doing a very "lite" India block for 4 weeks, just telling some Jataka stories and the story of the Buddha. We're not going to be doing recall or drawing from the stories, so I'm just offering the stories as a "gift" rather than looking for the kids to take them in on a deeper level.

Bring on the summer!!