summer school

Summer School 2025

This year’s summer school was very fun and something close to my heart…we looked at the history of fashion and fashions from around the world!

We had a small list of books and hands-on activity kits that were the basis for our historical knowledge:

  • Fashion: The Definitive History of Costume and Style
  • What People Wore When: A Complete Illustrated History of Costume from Ancient Times to the Nineteenth Century for Every Level of Society
  • Sketch Your Style: A Guided Sketchbook for Drawing Your Dream Wardrobe
  • Coco Chanel: Pearls, Perfume, and the Little Black Dress
  • Fancy Party Gowns: The Story of Fashion Designer Ann Cole Lowe
  • Klutz Tiny Fashion Studio Craft Kit
  • Fashion Design Kit

From there, we started with the basics…how color, pattern, and texture are the foundations of any fashion, and how fashion and true style are different. This was the part of the summer where I got to share my opinions on the topic, especially emphasizing that “fashion is about fitting in; style is about standing out.” We talked about things like couture vs. fast fashion, how popular fashions have influenced body image, the purpose of uniforms in various settings, and how things like rationing during war times forced styles to change. We even watched some bits from fashion shows, and discussed how the styles at shows do not necessarily reflect what even the designers expect the average person to wear in any given season.

What was really exciting, though, were the field trips we were able to go on, neither of which I was aware of when I chose the topic! First, we went to “Roaring” at the St Louis Art Museum, which focused on art, fashion, and automobiles in France from 1918-1939. We got to see a lot of cool designs (including one by Coco Chanel!), and Chickadee worked on sketching some of her favorites:

They even had a whimsical photo opp, which we both enjoyed:

And on a more serious note, we also toured the “Stitching History from the Holocaust” exhibit at the St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum. This exhibit gave us beautiful clothes to admire, but also a lot to think about…I’m very grateful that I ran across it!

There were plenty of opportunities for crafting and creativity this summer:

And we even had a guest designer make a beautiful creation…Bunny crafted this gorgeous pink dress!

This year’s summer school was very different because I only had one student, but it was also a lot of fun to talk about fashion throughout time and across the world!

Summer School 2024

I can’t believe that both the Olympics and summer vacation are over, but here we are. There were so many great moments, and today I’m taking a look back at our Paris 2024-themed summer school, starting with our visit to the Olympic Spectacular right here in St. Louis:

We made our favorite edible Olympic torches, and had a lovely toast to Paris 2024 with sparkling cider. I’m not going to lie, I was a little mad that we had already built the Lego Eiffel Tower years ago, because it would have been a nice summer school activity, but at least we had a ready-made centerpiece!

Our big activity for the summer was trying out some French recipes. We cooked a lot of different things, starting with a special series of meals for the Opening Ceremonies, and culminating with the pièce de résistance of the summer (and maybe my culinary career!), the Croquembouche. It’s nice that we’re finally at a point where both Ladybug and Chickadee can do a lot in the kitchen!

  • Croissants
  • Salade Niçoise
  • Vichyssoise
  • Bœuf Bourgignon
  • Macarons
  • Crepes
  • Salade Lyonnaise
  • Quiche Lorraine
  • Chocolate Soufflé
  • Gougères
  • Lavender Madeleines
  • Steak au Poivre with Red Wine Pan Sauce
  • Plateau de Fromages
  • Lemon-glazed French Sable Cookies
  • Croquembouche

I had a good book list, but coming up with crafts beyond cooking was a bit of a challenge. We did try to be fashion designers…do you think we’re ready for French haute couture?

And of course we made medals:

We had a lot of fun being creative with cooking and crafts!

I’m so glad Ticket to Ride Paris came out in time for us to play this summer! And we also played Ticket to Ride France (and watched all of the episodes of Rick Steves’ Europe we have set in France), which educated us on just how little we know about French geography!

Here’s a look at our complete medal table…Team USA definitely won!

Summer wrapped up quickly…on Monday, we begin the 2024-25 school year!

A French Feast for the Opening Ceremonies

Mesdames et Messieurs, la Cérémonie d’ouverture de Paris 2024!

Today is the Olympics Opening Ceremony I’ve been waiting for for eight years! While I enjoyed the Tokyo 2020(1) Games, it just wasn’t the same, and we all know it. But Paris 2024 is going to be the Olympics we all remember from pre-Covid days, and I can’t wait. Of course I planned a day full of French recipes to get us in the proper spirt, beginning with homemade croissants for breakfast, served with butter, Nutella, and homemade blueberry jam:

For lunch, I made Salade Niçoise. I liked it, but the best I can say for everybody else is that they found aspects of the salad they enjoyed. We did discover that we really like seven-and-a-half minute eggs, though!

For the soup course, I made Vichyssoise, which I thought was really interesting. The flavor was excellent, but it is a different experience eating cold soup!

I made the classic French dish, Bœuf Bourgignon, for dinner. It was A LOT of work, but really delicious!

We didn’t have champagne, but we did still have a toast to Paris 2024!

For dessert, Ladybug made macarons. I tried to help, but as it turns out, macarons are above my pay grade. She kindly let me help fill them, though. They’re so delicious, and we’re looking forward to making them again!

I have a few other French recipes I want to try over the next two weeks, but mostly, I’m just ready to watch the Olympic Games!!!

What We’re Reading–Paris 2024

The Paris 2024 Summer Olympics are only one week away! As usual, I planned this year’s summer school to coincide with The Games. Between the books I already had about the Olympics and some Olympians, and a few that I bought focused on France (including food, art, and fashion), I think we have a pretty good reading list. Also included are some DVDs (featuring Rick Steves), a CD, a craft kit (fashion-focused to fit the Paris theme), and a game (Ticket to Ride Paris came out just in time!). We’re also planning on doing some French cooking (I did promise, however, not to make snails!).

  • Rick Steves Pocket Paris
  • Mastering the Art of French Cooking volumes one and two
  • My Life in France
  • A Bite-Sized History of France: Gastronomic Tales of Revolution, War, and Enlightenment
  • The Little Prince
  • Coco Chanel: Pearls, Perfume, and the Little Black Dress
  • Linnea in Monet’s Garden
  • Where is the Eiffel Tower?
  • 2024 Paris Summer Olympics Activity Book
  • Paris Through a Fashion Eye
  • Courage to Soar
  • Fast Girls: A Novel of the 1936 Women’s Olympic Team
  • DK Eyewitness Books: Olympics
  • Great Moments in the Summer Olympics
  • What are the Summer Olympics?
  • How to Train with a T. Rex and Win Eight Gold Medals
  • The Wildest Race Ever
  • Nadia: The Girl Who Couldn’t Sit Still
  • The Story of the Olympics Games
  • Fashion Design Kit
  • Ticket to Ride Paris
  • Debussy for Daydreaming
  • 100 Years of Olympic Films
  • Rick Steves Europe: Paris and the Loire & France’s Countryside

The only thing missing from this list is a Lego set, which I try to include whenever possible, but we already have the Paris landmarks, and although it is a beautiful set, I can’t afford Notre-Dame de Paris at the moment.

Summer School 2023

Time for a look back at this year’s Fairytale-themed summer school!

I came up with four crafts to go with all of the stories we read, and I’m actually pretty proud of how creative I was to come up with them. My favorite might have been “Rumpelstiltskin’s straw-into-gold ornaments.” We made traditional Scandinavian straw stars, and then spray-painted them gold…they’re really pretty, and we have the materials and tools to make more at Christmas!

If that wasn’t my favorite craft, our Lego enchanted rose was. The idea was mine, and I bought all the necessary parts, but the execution was evasive to me…Ladybug, however, sat down with all of the materials and figured out how to make a beautiful centerpiece in no time!

I bought some gingerbread houses last Christmas and put them away for this summer…that’s always a fun craft, and it never turns out the same way twice!

And we also put together a fairy garden…we couldn’t believe how quickly the sprouts started coming up, and we’re looking forward to continuing to care for it!

We didn’t do as much cooking and baking as I had hoped (mainly because we were so busy making recipes from Lilo and Stitch: The Official Cookbook), but we did have a few fairytale dinners:

  • Fennel and Red Cabbage Slaw (The Brothers Grimm Cookbook)
  • Rapunzel…Angel-hair Pasta (The Brothers Grimm Cookbook)
  • Apple Punch (The Brothers Grimm Cookbook)
  • Mini Marbled Kugelhopfs (Fairytale Baking)
  • Golden Mountain Paella (The Brothers Grimm Cookbook)
  • Chocolate Ring (Fairytale Baking)

The only thing truly missing from this year’s summer school was a field trip…try as I might, I just couldn’t make that kind of connection. But it was a pretty fun, relaxed way to learn this summer, and that was really nice!

What We’re Reading–Fairy Tales

The theme for this year’s summer school is “Fairy Tales,” which I think follows last year’s Disney theme nicely. Our reading list is a little shorter than normal, but we’re going to be doing lots of cooking and crafts, too (right now, I’m planning on a fairy garden, a gingerbread house, “straw to gold” ornaments, and an enchanted rose centerpiece)! Here’s a look a the books I’ve assembled:

  • An Illustrated Treasury of Grimm’s Fairy Tales
  • The Blue Fairy Book
  • Who Were the Brothers Grimm?
  • The Irresistible Fairy Tale
  • The Fairy Tellers
  • The Brothers Grimm Cookbook
  • Fairytale Baking

I don’t know if I can come up with any field trips that fit the theme, but even if I don’t, it should be fun!

Summer School 2022

What can I say about this year’s summer school? One thing is for certain…I know I’ll never top it!

Yes, we had a reading list, and there were some amazing choices on there (Ladybug in particular really enjoyed many of the titles), but this summer was all about travel and experiences, including visits to Walt Disney World’s EPCOT, Hollywood Studios, Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom. It was like four days of field trips on steroids, where we went on rides, built things, and even learned things! (And let’s not forgot the three days of field trip equivalents in Washington D.C., where we visited monuments and memorials and museums, toured the US Capitol, and walked the grounds of George Washington’s Mount Vernon! Plus the day at Kennedy Space Center after our Disney fun concluded!)

Back at home, we kept the Disney magic going with art projects:

And games:

And lots and lots of cooking! We had 12 “Disney Dinners” at home over the summer (plus the one we indulged in at The Hollywood Brown Derby), which let us sample copycat recipes from the theme parks and the Disney World resorts:

Ladybug and Bunny especially enjoyed baking and decorating some Mickey Mouse cookies:

It wouldn’t be summer school without a Lego build, and we found the perfect set to reflect our summer fun!

And we squeezed in a few craft projects, including an amazing pumpkin coach, a cupcake liner lei modeled by Stitch, and a string art Mickey Mouse head that left glitter everywhere!

We also watched a ton of Disney documentaries (thank you Disney+) and classic Disney movies, some we had seen before, and some that were new to us. I especially loved the mid-century documentaries from when the theme parks were just getting their start, but the more modern ones, that focused on attractions we saw at Disney World (and their California counterparts) were fascinating, especially after we had the experience of seeing them first-hand.

Like I said, there won’t ever be a summer school like this again, where we were able to blend fun and learning and so many experiences together, but I’m really glad we got to do it once in our lifetime!

What We’re Reading–All About Disney!

This year’s summer school is going to be exceptionally fun, because we’re learning all about Disney! Walt Disney, Disney World, Disney animation/animators (including my favorite, Mary Blair), and Disney movies/characters. We’ll be reading books, watching movies, building an iconic Lego set, cooking, coloring, playing games, and doing crafts. Oh, and taking the biggest field trip of them all…a trip to Disney World! Here’s a look at our (mostly) book list, with a few fun extras thrown in:

  • Birnbaum’s Walt Disney World
  • A Portrait of Walt Disney World
  • The Disney Book
  • Disney World at 50
  • One Day at Disney
  • Holiday Magic at the Disney Parks
  • Yesterday’s Tomorrow
  • Ink and Paint: The Women of Walt Disney’s Animation
  • Pencils, Pens & Brushes
  • Pocket Full of Colors
  • The Art and Flair of Mary Blair
  • It’s a Small World
  • Walt Disney: An American Original
  • Who Was Walt Disney?
  • Where is Walt Disney World?
  • Disney Ideas Book
  • Art of Coloring: Walt Disney World
  • Delicious Disney
  • Entertaining with Disney
  • Mickey Mouse Cookie Cutters
  • Codenames: Disney Family Edition
  • A Visit to Walt Disney World board game
  • Lego Mini Disney Castle

We’ve had a lot of fun summer school themes in the past, but I’m pretty sure this will go down as the most fun summer school ever!

Summer School 2021

It seemed like the postponed Tokyo 2020 Olympics would never get here, and now they’ve already come and gone. Here’s a look back at our Japan-themed summer school.

We visited Origami in the Garden at the Missouri Botanical several times over the summer. The large-scale art installation was the perfect field trip to coincide with Tokyo 2020 (and was also postponed from last summer).

We also visited the Olympic Spectacular in St. Louis at Francis Field, home of the 1904 Summer Games:

I made a few fun treats for the Olympics…Olympics torches (white chocolate covered pretzels) and Team USA CHEERios treats.

We did a lot of cooking and tried a lot of Japanese foods. I worked really hard to find things we hadn’t had before, and used a variety of cooking methods and unfamiliar ingredients. We tried:

  • Spicy Ramen/Udon
  • Pork Gyoza
  • Coffee Jelly
  • Okonomiyaki
  • Matcha Mochi Cake
  • Vegetable Tempura
  • Potato Korokke
  • Fluffy Japanese Cheesecake
  • Kani Cream Korokke
  • Chicken Katsu Sandwich
  • Matcha Green Tea Cookies
  • Oyakodon

We were supposed to go out to a Japanese restaurant this summer, but COVID-19, so we got a party platter of sushi instead:

I’ve been holding on to the Lego Architecture Tokyo skyline since last year, and we finally got to build it!

Our American Girl dolls got into the Olympic spirit:

In between watching as much of the Olympics as we could, we also did some more traditional school work. We learned about Japanese history and culture, as well as the history of the Olympics. We read a lot of books…some I read out loud, and some were book basket choices. We also watched a selection of Olympic documentaries:

  • First—London 2012
  • The Everlasting Flame—Beijing 2008
  • Atlanta’s Olympic Glory—Atlanta 1996
  • 16 Days of Glory—Los Angeles 1984
  • Athens 2004: Stories of Olympic Glory
  • Seoul 1988

And we also did several crafts, including origami, paper lanterns, Koinobori (Japanese carp windsocks), pipe cleaner and tissue paper cherry blossom branches, and medals (of course!):

I’ve been holding on to Ticket to Ride: Japan since last year, and we finally had a chance to play! I really enjoyed the new game mechanics introduced in this edition, and it was fun to get to know the geography of the area a little bit better.

We updated our medal chart every evening…here’s a look at the final results…we were very excited that the US won the gold medal race and had the most medals overall!

And, better late than never, our Family Olympics, which was delayed due to heat. We only had four events this year (frisbee throw, broad jump, soccer kicks, and a running race), thanks to time constraints and a lack of basketball hoops on the backboards we normally use. Technically, Turkey came in first, but since we participate as a family, we all won gold!

This summer school was a long time coming. I think we all still have mixed feelings about the fact that the Olympics were held at this time, but we had to just accept that that was out of our control, and embrace the Olympics as we usually do. It’s always hard to say goodbye when they extinguish the flame, but the Winter Olympics are less than six months away, and we only have to wait three more years for Paris 2024!