Fourth of July Entertainment Round Up!
posted by Dawn on July 4th, 2008
Happy Independence Day! I hope you’re all out enjoying yourselves at parks, barbeques, parties, ballgames, movie theaters, and the like. For those of us who are more likely to spend the holiday at home, I thought it would be nice to piggyback off of Amanda’s super fun post from yesterday with some easy entertainment ideas for you and your family members! I’m not reinventing the wheel here, just having a little fun.
Five summery or patriotic movies you can enjoy with the kids:
- The Sandlot - summer classic about friendships, baseball, and a big scary dog. Includes a great 4th of July scene.
- Field of Dreams - quintessential baseball fantasy with great family relationships and sweet moments to treasure.
- My Girl - sweet, simple story about an important summer in young Vada Sultenfuss’ life (with a Home Alone-era Macaulay Culkin; remember how cute he was?)
- An American Tail - great family animated film about a little mouse who gets separated from his family en route to the States. Lots of history, too!
- Mr. Smith Goes to Washington - “It demonstrates democracy in action,” the trailer declares. Experience again this movie classic and tell your children all about the late, great James Stewart. I first saw this in a high school government class. Loved it.
Easy music idea:
If you’re looking for some fun with background music for your holiday dinner, look no further! Make a playlist or mix cd with “freedom”, “summer”, or “America” as your theme. This is especially fun to do with tweens & teens; give them $10 and have them buy 10 songs from an online store to make a mix for the family. Here’s a small sampling of what I found in my iPod with those words in the title:
I played my list at dinner last night and it sparked lots of fun conversation with my dear hubby. Crank it up and enjoy!
Any other film or music suggestions out there? Are you inspired to decorate your house like the one in the picture above? (Yes, that is an actual house in my neighborhood.) Have a great holiday, and for grins, I’ll have Bill Pullman take us out:
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History
The reading program I was working on with Darah is still in pilot mode and it was getting difficult to progress past the point we had made it to. I loved the program, but needed something that was a little more complete. I began a new reading program with Darah a few weeks ago. I wrote 
This program is geared toward the visual learner. Children with Down syndrome, autism, dyslexia, and an “overwhelming percentage of the population” are often visual learners. While many parents of children with special needs have embraced this program, they have a series for typical developing children as well. It does take some time to get it all set up, but once you set up the program you are good to go. I should be completely set for 178 days and then I will purchase Book 2. You can purchase the program with the flashcards preprinted. I saved a little money by writing them out myself. I keep the flashcards in order in a basket on my refrigerator and look at my daily schedule of what flashcards to present that day. I then show Darah the flashcards three times a day. As simplistic as it sounds, it works! By presenting these gigantic flashcards in groups of 5 over a cumulative 10 minutes a day, Darah has learned about 13 sight words! We are currently working on learning single words, but we will soon progress to learning to read sentences. The best part of this program is it has improved her speech! When she sees the flashcard with the word on it, she is articulating so much better than she did before. Her little voice is just way too cute when she says “pancake.” I am seeing results MUCH FASTER than with the other program we were doing. It requires much less energy and time on my part as well, and Darah seems to engage very well to this program.
