Obviously, from the title of this post, I’m not a kid any more. Tomorrow is the last day of school for Becca, and I’m not quite sure what we’re going to be doing for the summer. So many things to think about. I did plan one thing, a summer rec program offered through the township we live in. Great deal, four weeks from 9-12 for only $30 for both of the kids. And a bunch of the neighbors are going, too.

Yesterday I had a little chat with my two chickies. I told them they had to make a decision. They could decide to get along for the summer, swim, play and have fun OR they could argue and fight, and spend half of their summer stuck in their rooms. I have a feeling I’ll be having this talk about once a week for the next three months.

The other thing that I’m worried about is whether or not Becca will retain all of the stuff she learned in kindergarten. She really worked hard all year. The school send home an entire folder of activities for her to do over the summer. But you know what it looks like? Homework. I don’t think it will be easy for her to do homework over the summer. Hell, it was hard enough to get her to do it through the school year. And just when my brain started thinking about what I could do with her, I got a request to review a website. It’s exactly what I was looking for.

So, the website is jumpstart.com.  I had already purchased some JumpStart cd’s for my nieces when they were younger, so I was a little familiar with their other software. It promised to have lots of stuff for Becca’s age, and it delivered.  The first time we logged on, Becca had a blast picking her character’s clothes (and hair color – she chose blue!).  That was pretty much all we did the first time we logged on.  Chloe wasn’t exactly cool with Becca hogging up the computer.

The next time we logged on, Chloe was asleep.  That worked out much better.  It took a while for the website to load (I actually thought it had hung up my computer), but once we got it going it was some fun exploring.  There were some games that were just fun, and there were some incorporated things that she had learned in school.  You could choose different levels of diffuculty, also…which means I actually COULD get Chloe on this site.  The graphics are cool and very 3-D ish.  Becca really enjoyed it, and I think it will be easy to keep her brain working through the summer now.  The only thing she has to practice is using the arrow keys on the keyboard.  Her little fingers just can’t go fast enough with those buttons.  She does a great job with the mouse, though.

Here’s a little snippet of one of the games, Ghost Town Grab:

There’s even a blog for parents, and they have some great ideas (and I also found out that they’re coming out with a game for Wii)  Here’s a great post THEY did about summer brain drain. So, guess what the nice people at jumpstart.com did?  They gave me a 3 month membership to the website TO GIVE AWAY TO YOU!!!  It’s my first give away on the blog.  I feel so grown up.

So, if you have younger kids, there are a few ways you can enter my contest!

• Leave a comment here, and you get an entry
• Follow me on twitter (twitter/hdowney) Just come on back and leave another comment saying you’re following me!
• Post a message on twitter or facebook about this give away with a link (again, add a comment)
• Subscribe to my RSS Feed in a reader.  Put that in another comment, too!

I’ll use a random number generator on June 14th to get a winner (that’s in a week, people!).

I have more posts coming for ya…I think that next up will be about my old grade school. It’s closing and I got to walk through it for one last time.  I’ll fill ya in Tuesday (gotta go to commencements for our nephew tomorrow!)