Relaxing on the Rivah

 The kids and I are enjoying our last week off until the hustle and bustle of school starts up again.  With school starting before Labor Day for the first time ever, I head back Aug. 17 and the kids return Aug. 24.  The only upside is that we are finished with school June 3, 2016.  So while I'm not thrilled with my summer being cut short by this new schedule, it will be nice to be done so early in June.  
We don't get to visit salt water as much as I would like, but being near the water is relaxing, even if it's the Potomac River!  So I took Emily and Jason down to Colonial Beach this week for some fun in the sun!

When you go to the beach on a Tuesday, you end up with the whole place to yourselves!

Pause for one pic together....

and then it's back to the digging and running!

A nice cloudy day meant that I didn't have to panic about sunburn the whole time!

Ariel and Sofia were "learning to swim".

Jason brought his bag of construction vehicles, of course.

jumping waves

Back to Class (for me)

 When I registered for my two summer grad classes, I knew that they had an on-campus component called "summer institute".  I was expected to be on-campus for three days.  How easy was it to just stay with Cammy in Va Beach!  So I packed up Garrett and Caroline and headed to Va Beach on Monday evening.  The younger two headed to Peggy's house since Timmy leaves for work at 4 AM.  The group in the top picture was my first group to work with (for my class LIBS 602:  Production of Instructional Materials).  We created paper circuitry!  We used copper tape, a circle battery and LED lights.  The assignment was create a page out of a big picture book on constellations.  We were given the constellation Aquila (the Eagle).  
For my second class (LIBS 678:  Selection, Evaluation, and Utilization of Materials K-12) I had the same group minus Monique and we created a fictional website for a summer reading program.  We chose to focus ours on middle school boys--you can check it out at here!

When you push the page down and make the tape connect to the battery, you get light!