real summer begins now

the bean's summer school program at pomona college came to an end last week. it had lasted for three weeks, which went by insanely fast for all of us. i'd have loved to sign her up for the second session, but the rest of our summer is mapped out in such a way that it just wouldn't have worked out. 

they held a "family night" the evening before the last day, where everyone could come to meet all of the instructors and see displays of the work the kids had done during the session. it ended up that the hub had a client dinner and the old lady was visiting her dad, so it was just me and the bean. 

we stopped for that infamous "pink drink" at starbucks on our way. 

it was really crowded when we arrived, and parking was at a premium. we were greeted by volunteers when we finally walked in, along with this:

our first stop was the art room, where she quickly pointed out her version of the eiffel tower. "it's HORRIBLE," she said. "we couldn't look at a picture of it while we were drawing it and i had to do it from memory!"  i still thought it was fab, though, and i told her so. 

language arts was another of her favorite classes. they'd had to bring a "weird but cool" item to class one day to write about, and she'd chosen her japanese cat bank. 

the computer lab was pretty busy, but she was excited to show me what she'd worked on. they had learned some very basic coding, and the program she showed me took a drawing and added word bubbles and music. she was super proud of it. 

there were science and "think tank" classes too, and as we made our way outside she was stoked to see a couple of visitors who had come to school for an assembly early on in the session. 

i got this on the last day of school:

she had a great time at this program, met some new friends and got to learn some fun stuff. beats the worksheet-heavy "academics" summer program at her own school, with a pretty comparable price tag. she loved the idea of being "at college," and so i'm pretty sure we'll be coming back next year. 

and now she's enjoying true lazy summer days...going to bed whenever and sleeping in. school will be here before we know it and then we'll be back to the busy routine. so we're gonna enjoy this while we can.