Notepad: summer plans

[flea]

This summer I am planning to be home with the kids most of the time (Dillo all of the time; Casper will go to some part-day camps.) We'll do Camp Mommy again; I need the structure. I have to be careful not to get out of hand with the planning, but if I try to have a rough daily schedule, and theme weeks, I think we can manage okay.

One week is going to have to be Geology/Fossil/Dinosaur week; Dillo said this morning that he wants to spend the summer in the Badlands looking for fossils. (I told him that when he's a teenager we can probably find a volunteer project where he can do this.)

But! Cincinnati is actually very well-suited for fossil-hunting; my father used to do it as a child. Here be links to follow up on:
http://drydredgers.org/
http://ohiodnr.com/tabid/22049/default.aspx
http://familyfriendlycincinnati.com/2011/05/24/trammel-fossil-park-a-rocking-good-time/

I should also talk to our local friend who is a geologist manque and looooves to do outreach about geology, and see what he can cook up.

I also want to do a weekend trip to Pittsburgh to go to the Carnegie and see the dinosaurs (One of my few memories of living in PA from ages 3-6 is the dinosaurs at the Carnegie.)

See what I mean about getting out of hand?

Comments

[flea]

So interesting. In Athens, the only day camps that had full-workday coverage were the county's camps (and usually those went 9-4 and you had to pay extra for before and after, but at least they had it) and the YMCA (8-6). Everything else was part-day, and as or more expensive for part-day than we were paying for full-day.

Here the local city rec center has full-day camp, and that's where my kids would be going if I were working; they did Winter Break camp there, and they run the before/after school program at the local elementary. I didn't look hard for full-day options, since we know CRC and I didn't need it anyway. But there are a ton of part-day choices: Zoo, Art Museum, Ballet, various city parks, Nature Center (Casper would love these, but they run 9-2 and are in a far away place, plus pricey) smaller art camps at a local arts center, bookstore, and glassblowing studio... Right now Casper is doing 2 weeks of morning-only "reading camp" at a local University (cost: $80 total; it's part of a program to help them teach their MEd students about reading disabilities, and I hope they can either diagnose her with dyslexia or at least give us some idea of what we can do about her spelling) and 2 days of sleep-away Girl Scout camp ($135.) We're testing the Zoo education programs this weekend, and if she loves it we might do half-day Zoo camp for a week or 2 ($100). We'll fill in with free library and local bookstore stuff.

[loligo]

Ha, I spoke too soon! I just unpacked a school backpack that I've been neglecting all week, and found a flier for half-day camps at the university! They didn't have nearly so many last year. Young Scientist for Chuckles, and Engineering Legos for Squeaky, here we come....