Ten Years of Homeschool Completed!!!
Ten Years?!?
Wow I'm getting old. I'm in my 40th year of life, and I even googled "Hair cuts that make you look young," Yep. I'm getting to that point.
Ten years ago I taught Maxwell kindergarten. I was so naive. I was so arrogant. I didn't know what I was doing. But I had the best of intentions, and I was doing my best.
I've realized that's all I can expect of myself: good intentions and doing my best.
If my kids turn out horrible and/or hate me, I can rest assured that I was doing what I truly believed was the best for my family, and that I did all I could.
Sometimes I worry I do too much for my kids and don't make them work. Evidence of this:
Sometimes I think I'm too lazy and don't get my family doing every thing I think they should, but at the end of it all, I've done what I could.
I've done little and big things, and tried to use the principles of the slight edge. Like reading to my kids almost every night:
Sooooo, how did this year go?
Well, dad has made mornings productive. He wakes us up at 7am and we do exercises and scripture study and often meditations. Then I get my video devotionals going, and since COVID we've been doing history right after devotionals, which ensures that we actually get it done.
I'm SOO glad that we did every opportunity that Cardston presented itself. All of the running around town wasn't too bad, specifically because of the carpool "mom buses" that happened, and since it all stopped with COVID, that time was truly a blessing.
I LOVE my Cardston homeschool mom friends and their families. Truly.
No judgement, no drama, no frustration, no weirdness. Tons of support, tons of understanding, tons of resources, tons of fun, tons of genuine love.
This is why I live in Cardston.
This was us at the beginning of the year:
I forgot to get a photo of us a couple of nights ago. Yes, that's right, we got together under "COVID" friendly regulations. We all were outside in my backyard, all in our own chairs, discussing the year and our lives.
It's been a long time since we were able to do that. It was sooo good for us.
They were all asking me about what I did with a 9th grader, and what I planned on doing with a 10th grader (Maxwell is one of the oldest of our group.) I honestly don't know what is going to happen. I have plans for him, but it's scary to think that Maxwell's homeschool experiment is heading towards completion. In just a couple years, he's going to go out into the real world. Will he be prepared?
We'll find out I guess.
One cool thing that happened at the end of this school year is this photo:
That is Daniel picking up a chapter book of his own accord and reading it just for fun. Every mom-of-dyslexic's dream come true.
I now have three of these photos. One for Maxwell, Hyrum, and now Daniel. I have faith it will happen for William and Abraham as well.
The crazy thing about this photo is that it really was the first time I saw Daniel reading a chapter book just for fun, but it just so happened to be during the Westwind Alt Zoom year end call! Talk about evidence of learning! LOL
I guess the main reason I feel like school is over, is because I'm done with Rightstart math for the year. William and Abraham got done with their books. Here's William's end of the year test:
This is grade three math even though he's only in grade 1!!! He even completed all of times tables, my youngest child ever to get to this point!
However, it is very evident to me that he will need to go through them again next year to get them firmly and comfortably in his mind.
One thing I love about Rightstart, is that the first few lessons and the last few lessons are pretty easy peasy. One of the last lessons in level A had Abraham finding out what quarters were by separating water into four containers.
Abraham also got through his Handwriting without tears book
And we are not done with everything I had wanted to do with science. Maybe we'll have a few lessons during summer once COVID has really calmed down. I don't know, but I'm not too worried either. I think the main thing we didn't get to was the PH scale.
We'll get to that someday I'm sure. I also feel like we never did simple machines from last year. Hummm....well see what happens.
As for history, I feel good about what we were able to do. We probably wouldn't have gotten to this point in history lessons if it wasn't for COVID, so there's a silver lining in everything I suppose.
We learned a bit about Czar Ivan the Great and made Russian Easter eggs as our activity.
We used the shrinkydink egg covers which my kids thought were magical. A hit.
Then we studied Guttenberg's printing press, which I feel like is the most important invention in history. (Have you ever felt like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were the modern Guttenbergs? Because I have.) We printed our own words using this awesome kit that I have. I think I would like another one so we can have more that one of each letter.
We learned about the Spanish Inquisition, but we didn't do any activity. Holy cow was that time period messed up! And it wasn't until our study as a family this year that I realized that Ferdinand and Isabella were the monarchs at the time of its start! Ferdinand and Isabella were the parents of Henry's wife Catherine whom he created the church of England to divorce, and they were the grandparents of Bloody Mary as well! CRAZY!
Then we studied Martin Luther. One of the most important guys in history! And as an activity, I made pictures of someone paying the pope "indulgences" that they coloured and then had them put them on our door. (No hammering on my door, thank you!)
We continued to learn about the reformation, and we learned more about Calvin and Tyndale as well, and we watched this EXCELLENT documentary.
Of course, Henry the 8th is a huge part of the reformation, so we studied him specifically. No activity, but we started watching the video I made about him every day that week during devotionals.
We also watched our home video about when we went to Anne Boleyn's childhood home. My kids have had HANDS ON experience when it comes to learning about Henry the 8th. Is that cool or what?!
Then we learned about Elizabeth the 1st. I love learning about her. As our activity, we made ruffled collars.
Then we jumped over to the Italian renaissance and studied Leonardo Di Vinci. One of the most fascinating guys who ever lived IMO. As our activity I bought a Di Vinci model, and Maxwell loved putting it together, and it worked, but we couldn't figure out the weights to make it tell time properly.
Then we learned about Michelangelo. Okay people: we have studied Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, and more and have very little nudity shown, but I just couldn't teach Michelangelo without nudity. (Well, we had recently seen a lot of Di Vinci's Vitruvian man) So we had to go over all the Greek philosophies and art and science ideas to show that this nudity was not trying to be inappropriate.
We watched these Youtube videos by "Artageous with Nate" and it made me remember loving Art History. It was like knowing all these inside scoops about some of the most meaningful representations of our history.
As our activity we made ice sculptures which ended up into smashing blocks of ice. Sculpting is HARD! (pun intended)
And our last week of school was spent on Shakespeare! Yet again we had a home video of our time in England to drive home the concept. So cool.
We learned about Romeo and Juliet on Monday, The Tempest on Tuesday, A Midsummer Night's Dream on Wednesday, and Macbeth (or as Daniel said "Macdeath") on Thursday. We were supposed to do Hamlet on Friday, but we were busy getting ready for our camping trip, so maybe next week.
I know that there are plenty of Shakespeare lovers (especially homeschool Shakespeare lovers) who are pulling out their hair and screaming at my lack of time and focus on Shakespeare, but most of my kids are still young, and it was meant as an introduction more than anything.
There are some awesome Shakespeare story books that helped me teach these plays. They make them very simplified and easy for children to understand:
We made puppets as our activity:
And in other news, a couple of weeks ago we went to Writing on Stone. We NEED to get out of the house these days, and It was sooooo much fun to go to theoe hoodoos. I had always dreamed of taking my kids to Goblin Valley in Utah, not realizing that we had something so similar only two hours away! I didn't discover this place until we went there for School when learning about First Nations a couple of years ago.
I was nervous, because some of our friends went the same time as us, and then when we got there, Dustin's sister (and her humongous family) was randomly there as well! I thought the COVID police would get us for sure, but then we found out the law had been changed the day before so that 50 people could be together outside!!! WHOO HOOO!!!!
Also, we just got back from camping. You aren't allowed to go camping on provincial land yet, so we went to P.L.U.Z. where we camped for free, but we had to make our own toilet out of a bucket and sawdust because apparently closing public toilets makes it so COVID doesn't spread !@*@*.
It was an absolute blast. Even though our last night had a crazy Lightning rain storm, we had our fill of s'mores, walks, hot dogs, campfire talks, and taking it easy. Love it.
But what about this summer?
Well I have plans.
I'm not going to stop teaching Abraham and William All About Reading. We're a quarter through the book, so my goal for William is to be at least half way through by the time school starts. I might need to start over from the beginning with Abraham though. He might need more time.
Also, I'm going to actually teach Daniel an Hyrum cursive for real this summer and have them do writing assignments in cursive as well.
And Maxwell will continue to do spelling, writing and ACT prep throughout the summer.
But these shouldn't take too much time, so I should have time to do individual projects with each of my kids. My kids each have a day of the week that it "their day" (mostly to pray.) Maxwell/Monday, Hyrum/Tuesday, Daniel/Wednesday etc, and I can do their projects on their day.
Maxwell is working on a novel, or maybe he'll want help on his 3D printing jobs he does like the "Square sushi pooper" he made:
And Abraham and I want to make a book out of his "Front Flipping Dinosaur" pictures he's made.
And I'm not sure what the others want to do.
I know I personally want to work on the book about my mom's life, and to work on videos that make it easy to learn Arbinger Institute ideas and other homeschool videos.
We'll see....maybe well just take it easy or go on an adventure.
Here comes SUMMER!
Wow I'm getting old. I'm in my 40th year of life, and I even googled "Hair cuts that make you look young," Yep. I'm getting to that point.
Ten years ago I taught Maxwell kindergarten. I was so naive. I was so arrogant. I didn't know what I was doing. But I had the best of intentions, and I was doing my best.
Cute tiny Maxwell at the beginning of this all!
I've realized that's all I can expect of myself: good intentions and doing my best.
If my kids turn out horrible and/or hate me, I can rest assured that I was doing what I truly believed was the best for my family, and that I did all I could.
Sometimes I worry I do too much for my kids and don't make them work. Evidence of this:
Sometimes I think I'm too lazy and don't get my family doing every thing I think they should, but at the end of it all, I've done what I could.
I've done little and big things, and tried to use the principles of the slight edge. Like reading to my kids almost every night:
Sooooo, how did this year go?
Well, dad has made mornings productive. He wakes us up at 7am and we do exercises and scripture study and often meditations. Then I get my video devotionals going, and since COVID we've been doing history right after devotionals, which ensures that we actually get it done.
I'm SOO glad that we did every opportunity that Cardston presented itself. All of the running around town wasn't too bad, specifically because of the carpool "mom buses" that happened, and since it all stopped with COVID, that time was truly a blessing.
I LOVE my Cardston homeschool mom friends and their families. Truly.
No judgement, no drama, no frustration, no weirdness. Tons of support, tons of understanding, tons of resources, tons of fun, tons of genuine love.
This is why I live in Cardston.
This was us at the beginning of the year:
I forgot to get a photo of us a couple of nights ago. Yes, that's right, we got together under "COVID" friendly regulations. We all were outside in my backyard, all in our own chairs, discussing the year and our lives.
It's been a long time since we were able to do that. It was sooo good for us.
They were all asking me about what I did with a 9th grader, and what I planned on doing with a 10th grader (Maxwell is one of the oldest of our group.) I honestly don't know what is going to happen. I have plans for him, but it's scary to think that Maxwell's homeschool experiment is heading towards completion. In just a couple years, he's going to go out into the real world. Will he be prepared?
We'll find out I guess.
One cool thing that happened at the end of this school year is this photo:
That is Daniel picking up a chapter book of his own accord and reading it just for fun. Every mom-of-dyslexic's dream come true.
I now have three of these photos. One for Maxwell, Hyrum, and now Daniel. I have faith it will happen for William and Abraham as well.
The crazy thing about this photo is that it really was the first time I saw Daniel reading a chapter book just for fun, but it just so happened to be during the Westwind Alt Zoom year end call! Talk about evidence of learning! LOL
I guess the main reason I feel like school is over, is because I'm done with Rightstart math for the year. William and Abraham got done with their books. Here's William's end of the year test:
This is grade three math even though he's only in grade 1!!! He even completed all of times tables, my youngest child ever to get to this point!
However, it is very evident to me that he will need to go through them again next year to get them firmly and comfortably in his mind.
One thing I love about Rightstart, is that the first few lessons and the last few lessons are pretty easy peasy. One of the last lessons in level A had Abraham finding out what quarters were by separating water into four containers.
Abraham also got through his Handwriting without tears book
And we are not done with everything I had wanted to do with science. Maybe we'll have a few lessons during summer once COVID has really calmed down. I don't know, but I'm not too worried either. I think the main thing we didn't get to was the PH scale.
We'll get to that someday I'm sure. I also feel like we never did simple machines from last year. Hummm....well see what happens.
As for history, I feel good about what we were able to do. We probably wouldn't have gotten to this point in history lessons if it wasn't for COVID, so there's a silver lining in everything I suppose.
We learned a bit about Czar Ivan the Great and made Russian Easter eggs as our activity.
We used the shrinkydink egg covers which my kids thought were magical. A hit.
Then we studied Guttenberg's printing press, which I feel like is the most important invention in history. (Have you ever felt like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were the modern Guttenbergs? Because I have.) We printed our own words using this awesome kit that I have. I think I would like another one so we can have more that one of each letter.
We learned about the Spanish Inquisition, but we didn't do any activity. Holy cow was that time period messed up! And it wasn't until our study as a family this year that I realized that Ferdinand and Isabella were the monarchs at the time of its start! Ferdinand and Isabella were the parents of Henry's wife Catherine whom he created the church of England to divorce, and they were the grandparents of Bloody Mary as well! CRAZY!
Then we studied Martin Luther. One of the most important guys in history! And as an activity, I made pictures of someone paying the pope "indulgences" that they coloured and then had them put them on our door. (No hammering on my door, thank you!)
We continued to learn about the reformation, and we learned more about Calvin and Tyndale as well, and we watched this EXCELLENT documentary.
Of course, Henry the 8th is a huge part of the reformation, so we studied him specifically. No activity, but we started watching the video I made about him every day that week during devotionals.
We also watched our home video about when we went to Anne Boleyn's childhood home. My kids have had HANDS ON experience when it comes to learning about Henry the 8th. Is that cool or what?!
Then we learned about Elizabeth the 1st. I love learning about her. As our activity, we made ruffled collars.
Then we jumped over to the Italian renaissance and studied Leonardo Di Vinci. One of the most fascinating guys who ever lived IMO. As our activity I bought a Di Vinci model, and Maxwell loved putting it together, and it worked, but we couldn't figure out the weights to make it tell time properly.
Then we learned about Michelangelo. Okay people: we have studied Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, and more and have very little nudity shown, but I just couldn't teach Michelangelo without nudity. (Well, we had recently seen a lot of Di Vinci's Vitruvian man) So we had to go over all the Greek philosophies and art and science ideas to show that this nudity was not trying to be inappropriate.
We watched these Youtube videos by "Artageous with Nate" and it made me remember loving Art History. It was like knowing all these inside scoops about some of the most meaningful representations of our history.
As our activity we made ice sculptures which ended up into smashing blocks of ice. Sculpting is HARD! (pun intended)
And our last week of school was spent on Shakespeare! Yet again we had a home video of our time in England to drive home the concept. So cool.
We learned about Romeo and Juliet on Monday, The Tempest on Tuesday, A Midsummer Night's Dream on Wednesday, and Macbeth (or as Daniel said "Macdeath") on Thursday. We were supposed to do Hamlet on Friday, but we were busy getting ready for our camping trip, so maybe next week.
I know that there are plenty of Shakespeare lovers (especially homeschool Shakespeare lovers) who are pulling out their hair and screaming at my lack of time and focus on Shakespeare, but most of my kids are still young, and it was meant as an introduction more than anything.
There are some awesome Shakespeare story books that helped me teach these plays. They make them very simplified and easy for children to understand:
We made puppets as our activity:
And in other news, a couple of weeks ago we went to Writing on Stone. We NEED to get out of the house these days, and It was sooooo much fun to go to theoe hoodoos. I had always dreamed of taking my kids to Goblin Valley in Utah, not realizing that we had something so similar only two hours away! I didn't discover this place until we went there for School when learning about First Nations a couple of years ago.
I was nervous, because some of our friends went the same time as us, and then when we got there, Dustin's sister (and her humongous family) was randomly there as well! I thought the COVID police would get us for sure, but then we found out the law had been changed the day before so that 50 people could be together outside!!! WHOO HOOO!!!!
Also, we just got back from camping. You aren't allowed to go camping on provincial land yet, so we went to P.L.U.Z. where we camped for free, but we had to make our own toilet out of a bucket and sawdust because apparently closing public toilets makes it so COVID doesn't spread !@*@*.
It was an absolute blast. Even though our last night had a crazy Lightning rain storm, we had our fill of s'mores, walks, hot dogs, campfire talks, and taking it easy. Love it.
But what about this summer?
Well I have plans.
I'm not going to stop teaching Abraham and William All About Reading. We're a quarter through the book, so my goal for William is to be at least half way through by the time school starts. I might need to start over from the beginning with Abraham though. He might need more time.
Also, I'm going to actually teach Daniel an Hyrum cursive for real this summer and have them do writing assignments in cursive as well.
And Maxwell will continue to do spelling, writing and ACT prep throughout the summer.
But these shouldn't take too much time, so I should have time to do individual projects with each of my kids. My kids each have a day of the week that it "their day" (mostly to pray.) Maxwell/Monday, Hyrum/Tuesday, Daniel/Wednesday etc, and I can do their projects on their day.
Maxwell is working on a novel, or maybe he'll want help on his 3D printing jobs he does like the "Square sushi pooper" he made:
And Abraham and I want to make a book out of his "Front Flipping Dinosaur" pictures he's made.
And I'm not sure what the others want to do.
I know I personally want to work on the book about my mom's life, and to work on videos that make it easy to learn Arbinger Institute ideas and other homeschool videos.
We'll see....maybe well just take it easy or go on an adventure.
Here comes SUMMER!