The Dragons of August

The dragons of August have firmly coiled themselves around Florida. Their fiery breath steals the air from my lungs when I step outside to get the morning paper. By noon, their forked tongues have licked all the pavements, turning a barefoot stroll into hopping over hot coals. Their weapons are heat, humidity, and hurricanes. My only defense is air conditioning, the technology that makes bearing Florida summers possible.

August is not for the faint of heart. It stares at me from the calendar, daring me to face it one more time. Run errands early. Drink plenty of fluids. Stay indoors after lunch. Wait for the welcome rumble of afternoon thunder and cooling rains. Venture out cautiously after dinner.

If I survive the standoff, sometime in late September, I'll be rewarded with the first cool tease of (still) far away winter: a refreshing breeze.

A Date with a Calendar

Now that school’s out, we don’t have the thrice weekly routine of getting ready and heading out to preschool. My boys are feeling a little lost.  Regular activities defined their days during the school year.  They felt secure knowing that Monday meant school and gymnastics and Wednesday meant library and church. Summer is a little more freewheeling and I’m not one for scheduling every minute of the day. So we needed something to help us keep track of our time.

Enter the kids’ calendar.

DLTK is a fantastic website, with printable coloring sheets and activities for young children, including some excellent Bible activities.  DLTK’s calendar page  allows us to customize a monthly calendar by theme and language. It’s simple. Choose the month, year, title image and click create.   We’re using the summer calendar theme and selected a sand castle for June.

Each morning we look at the calendar and place a sticker in the square for the day.  We talk about the name of the month, the day of the week and what we’re going to do.  I added in our regular weekly activities with color-coded symbols (cross for church, wavy blue line for swim).  We’re using our calendar to count down to much anticipated events like Vacation Bible School and family vacation.

As a bonus, we’re reviewing math skills by counting to 30 (or 31) and repeating the names of the days of the week. By the end of August, we’ll all be ready for preschool to begin again.