December Homeschool

Simon has been working hard on his winter drawing/writing book.  His drawings are so cute!

When I got to be Simon's helper, he had a special guest come to visit - Tommy, the red tailed hawk!  It was such a neat experience to get to see this amazing creature up close!

The kids made powderhorns for their American Revolution unit.  We've been reading "Susanna's Midnight Ride" and it has been such an interesting and fun unit to study!

Dinner church has continued to be a hit for our kids all semester.  They look forward to it every week.  All of the kids have served the meal at least once, and it's so fun to see Simon get in there too.  

Igraine the Brave, made by Olivia at Co-op art class out of tooling foil, tempera paint, and sharpie.

 For the end of our Susanna/American Revolution unit, the kids made a bald eagle out of oil pastel, sulfite paper, and tempera paint stars.  They also worked really hard on these awesome American Revolution portfolios which had tons of learning and projects insde.

Throughout the semester, Nolan and Olivia have been pen pals with a couple of seniors at Grace Lodge, Ken and Linda.  They wrote letters several times throughout the semester and got to know their pals on paper, but we finally got to meet them right before Christmas.  Grace Lodge threw a pizza party and the kids came to chat and put a face with a name!  It was fun to get to hear some stories and learn more about them.  Ken is 94, and is having a hard time writing letters, but we will visit him the next time we go to Grace Lodge.  Linda wants to keep writing with Olivia.  All of the seniors were exceptionally sweet and it was a good opportunity for all!

November Homeschool

We did a mini unit on the Election, focusing mainly on the qualities we should be looking for in a leader.  I think they came up with a pretty great list!

Nolan has been such an enthusiastic puppeteer for the church Christmas program.  He took it upon himself to find some puppets and props at home so he could practice on his own!  Great job, Nolan!

Nolan made these beautiful fall leaves using oil pastels, liquid watercolors and salt.  It turned out gorgeous!

Gabrielle and I have stepped into leadership roles at Trinity, leading the elementary age ministry for the semester.  It has been a fun adventure and nice getting to know more of the kids.  Our kids are loving dinner church nights!

We tackled a pretty involved art project for our book, "Eagle Drums." The story is about the Inupiaq tribe in Alaska, and how the eagle elders taught them how to rely on each other.  We decided to have the kids write their own myth about an animal and then made an animal head out of celluclay.  Nolan did an amazing account of how the panda came to be; Olivia made a sweet story about how the fox became red; and Simon wrote about how a tiger got its stripes.  They first made an armature out of recycled materials like egg cartons, aluminum foil, paper cups, and bottle caps.  They they molded the celluclay paste over the top.  They painted their creation with acrylic paint, and added details with paint pens.  They used wooden beads to frame the edge of the canvas board and they turned out so unbelievably cool.  It took us several weeks, but it might be my favorite project they have ever created!

Olivia and I went to church choir practice together and I treated her to a lunch at Tilly's afterward.  Love one-on-one time with my girl!

Miles is helpful with schoolwork.

I have been playing piano for the high school musical again this year.  It is Footloose and it has been a timesuck, but a fun one!  It's been 3 hours a night of rehearsals several nights a week, not to mention the practice at home to get these rock and roll songs to happen.  I'm proud of myself for undertaking the challenge and it's fun to stretch my music muscles a bit in this way!

You have to drink tea when you're learning about the Boston Tea Party, right?

We made a thankful lapbook, exploring gratitude around Thanksgiving.  They did a great job!

The first snowfall of the season is always so exciting!

After years of waiting, we began watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy with the kids recently.  To our delight, they've been super into it.  We have been working on adding some details about the story into our literature journals and Simon wanted to draw some pictures too.  I love the curly haired Frodo running for his life in all of the pictures!