Summer?

Ok so we've had a few days of 60 degree weather.. I have to keep reminding the girls that it's still summer.....But now it's getting hot again....
F has been very into the hurricane season, he has spent hours on the computer looking at hurricanes, how they form, what their strength numbers mean, etc... he loves to look at the pictures/videos of hurricanes in action. He also has been looking at tornadoes and which states get the most in any given time.
We have played scrabble, battle ship and chess this week. We also did an interactive game on line about the Under Ground Railroad, where he learned a little more about the experiences of slaves. It also had a time line from the 1500's to the late 1800's, including the civil war, facts on at least 10 people who supported the abolitionist movement and other interesting things.

I sent in my IHIP on Aug. 15th according to the nys regulations. I sent in the LOI (letter of intention) in July, got a response within a few days. They are supposed to mail us a package with the info. and paperwork within 10 days..they are soo overwhelmed there with one of them gone for good....I knew that wasn't going to happen, but when I still hadn't heard from them 1 month later I decided to follow the reg's and send the IHIP in by Aug.15th. The home schooling coordinator read it within 5 days and sent it back suggesting I redo the dates for my quarterly reports. I had put the first one on Sept. 30Th because we have been 'schooling' year round. I decided that I didn't want to go through the hassle of explaining myself to her about the year round schooling and just changed the dates to correspond to a 'school' year that begins in Sept. and ends in June. I emailed that back to her yesterday and now am waiting for a response. I know the IHIP is in compliance but I'd like to get it in writing. I hate the waiting, I know everything is fine but I need that letter for proof.

Last week we went to the beach in SI, but it was not so nice there..too much mussel shells, so we went to the Wolf's pond park and the kids played a while with some other kids, ran in the water sprinkler, and then we walked on the beach there (much nicer) looking for rocks for F's collection. We got some really nice ones, he has the 100 he needs for the Back to No school picnic parade of 100 things... each family was asked to compile 100 somethings for the parade. It seems that the group has grown to over 100 families, that's just one group...There are more than 6000 hs'ers in NYS..and that's just the ones that belong to a group.....
I love it....
We also found that at the park there is a small memorial set up for the soldiers who perished at the Battle of the Bulge in WWII. I have to keep that in mind once we get to studying WWII, there is a big plaque there with info. all about the battle, complete with maps.
I have also started to do more grammar work with F, so we sat down and did a few pages on various words that can be reduced like he will to (he'll) etc....
I made a whole bunch of work pages from Edhelper.com that I printed for future use. I also got pages for J to practice her name and the letters of the alphabet.
I also started a group for the Around the World (country study) club that we will be going to once a month. I got a pretty nice response from parents in Bklyn. The first one will be in Sept. and we will study Peru. It's so nice that we have things planned in Bklyn for the whole year. We will have our meeting at another hs mom's office which is wonderful, free and set up for 'schooling'.
It's great to have resources that we can pool for the education of our children.