School Summary - The Finish Line (aka We're done!)

A Summary of May 13 - 24

We did it. We finished our second year of homeschooling. Looking back, there were weeks when it felt like we were just treading water and not making any progress or getting anything done. The planned folders of worksheets and projects seemed countless. And then, just like that, I blinked, and our year is over.

I have often thought that with children (especially the real littles) that the days are long but the years are short. It seems that is becoming more evident as I get older and the years pass by quickly. 

It was a great year!

Here's what we did our last two weeks:

Things that were scheduled as usual:

Math

Tenor finished Saxon 6/5 and started 7/6. 

Soprano finished Saxon 3. Can I just say how excited I am to NOT have to do the meeting or teaching of her math lessons next year??

Language Arts (Grammar, Spelling, Penmanship, Reading, and Writing)

Tenor completed Rod and Staff English 5 and Spelling 5. He did his last handwriting practice sheets a few weeks ago and won't have any next year. He also did all of the IEW Ancient-History based Writing Lessons that corresponded with our MFW studies. He'll finish out the lessons in that book next year when we start with Ancient Rome.

Soprano finished Rod and Staff English 3 and Spelling 3. Her last reading book was Misty of Chincoteague (a perfect fit for our resident horse-lover.) She also finished A Reason for Handwriting C to learn cursive. Next year, we'll use Queen's Copywork for Girls as her penmanship lessons. Her Millenium Girl's writing project was also completed this week. She wrote a great creative short-story about a horse-riding girl who meets a foreign princess with a problem.

Electives:

Typing: They did another year of Typer Island. I think there's still room for improvement so we'll probably continue with it next year.

Spanish: Tenor finished his workbook and Soprano finished Switched on Schoolhouse Elementary Spanish. I'm looking into using Mango (free through the local library) and Dora and Diego Homeschool Spanish next year.

Health: workbook finished with worksheets on Lance Armstrong, Exercise in the Olden Days, Worry, Happy Being Yourself, and Being Sunsmart.

PA History: Another finished workbook with worksheets on the State Fish, a word search, and some PA trivia.

Geography: We did half of a workbook this year and finished out with one last worksheet on the Islands of Oceania.

My Father's World Creation to the Greeks-

Our official MFW work was done but we spent the last two weeks of the school year reading more book basket books and finishing up Ancient Greece lapbooks. I have realized that my younglings hate lapbooking so while I think it's really cool, I probably won't use any next year. I felt like a broken record for the past 2 weeks... 'did you work on your lapbook? did you read any book basket books?' over and over and over.

Soprano's lapbook

Tenor's lapbook

So that's it. I've been typing up summaries, filing papers and projects, making photo collages, and getting all of our official documents in order so that we can have our yearly evaluation. Then all I have to do is submit our portfolios to the school district and start prepping for next year. :)