Summertime

So far, I think that Emily has been enjoying her summer. She has been doing camps, which have been good - grossology, green thumb club, create a musical play, etc. She had a good 4th of July with a party at a friend's country club, so there was swimming, face painting, balloon animals, etc.

About a weeks ago, we left for our big summer trip. We will be spending about a month in Minnesota before driving to NYC for a few days, Virginia for a few days, and then back home again. Emily did pretty well in the car on the way to Minnesota. As we approached Minneapolis, we pointed out the downtown skyline and she declared, "It looks like Zootopia!" In fact, it actually did sort of look like the city from Zootopia! :) She has been having fun so far. One activity, which was a big hit was berry picking at a local farm. We came home loaded up with raspberries, strawberries, green and yellow beans, and sugar snap peas.

As you might expect, Emily was happy to pick anything, but was more happy about eating the fruit. I don't think that she bothered to try any of the veggies.

One of the things that we have been trying to do is to work with Emily every day on her reading. She just needs practice, and hasn't wanted to do it on her own, so we have tried to make it a priority. Her general perspective has been that reading is "boring" and "stupid" and that she doesn't intend to ever learn to read. All of that changed suddenly this week, though, when she came across James and the Giant Peach. For whatever reason, she has decided that this book is worth reading and she can't wait to work on it with me every night. It is long (for her) and above her reading level so I tend to read most of it, and then periodically I have her do a few sentences. Hopefully we can continue to find the "right" books to keep her entertained.

Finally, Emily has changed her mind on her intended profession. For years she has wanted to be a chemist, but now she has decided that she wants to be a singer. She is very serious about it and has asked me to arrange voice lessons for her. One of her favorite activities is to sing in the car. She knows most of the songs that come on the radio and she gets really into it. Sometimes we even catch her rocking out with a little air guitar:

As you can tell, I think she likes to ham it up a bit for the camera. :) She does really like that song, though. This is the second time that I have filmed her playing air guitar along with it. In the other video, she was more mellow but also pretty funny because she was wearing sunglasses so she looked like a mini rock star.