We've been trying to wrap up school for the year . My plan was for Jonah to finish year 1 before his trip to Disney World with his grandparents. Mission #1 - Check!
Looking back on his first year of real school, I'm quite happy. It was a year of tremendous growth for him, both academically and in other ways. He loved exams and it was so fun and encouraging for us to look back over his portfolio together. It took us a little over a year to finish AO Year 1 but he actually did a term of 3.5 with Lucy in the middle and we speed up the last term of year 1 just a but (basically doing 2 readings daily) so I'm excited to start Year 2 with him as I think he is more than ready for the challenge it will bring.
Then while he was gone and last week once he was back, Lucy and I finished up the last couple week of her second term of Year 4. She started exams today. Mission #2 - Check!
Year 4 scared me because of all the new subjects but she's done so well. She just finished Grammar Island and Practice Island and she'd tell you she is so happy to be done with Grammar until the fall but I've loved the MCT program and really, she does too. I won't do a full exam/term write-up like I normally do but if you go back and find what I said we were starting with, basically we loved it all! No major switches coming up with is lovely.
Overall, I'm very pleased with the kid's efforts with what I gave them. But I want to be real, this term did not end up being all I planned. We didn't do together time basically at all after January. We didn't get to meet up with our other CM family to do things together weekly like we had planned either (I think we met for lessons twice? But maybe only once). I don't feel guilty for that because it couldn't be helped. We were sick. And then as soon as someone recovered, we were sick again. And again. It was ridiculous. I'd say we're past it now but Jude and Norah had fevers this week and this weekend Jude woke up looking like this
It's just roseola. He'll be fine. And I'm not trying to complain because germs happen but we couldn't sing, we couldn't meet, we couldn't recite. So those plans lay in their spots, "Gone but not forgotten is the perfect phrase" springs to mind (the kids have been listening to Mary Poppins Returns lately). So, despite a decent term we didn't do: Swedish Drill, Picture Study, Recitation, the planned handicraft more than twice, over half the planned tea times, map drills. We did listen to the hymns and folk songs but didn't sing much because - voices. And nature study, well, we did one outing. Shocking, I now. And I call myself a Charlotte Mason homeschooler!
So when I pulled up the exams, I ended up having to delete a number of questions and I was so tempted to be discouraged. But I'm not. Education is a Life and we need brain food to sustain that life but it doesn't always have to look the same. When we were sick, I feed our bodies pretty simple. Lots of chicken soup. Fruit and Sandwhiches. More chicken soup. I didn't make big fancy meals - even ones that would have been really healthy and delicious. I wouldn't say that's the idea for every day for one's life but what we ate was nourishing and tasty and sustained us while not depleating me of my tiny remaining energy.
And when we were sick, we used a lot more audiobooks that usual (my kids love Audiobooks for free reads and extra time but I don't normally use them for school books), we cut things that involved sitting up and talking/singing or having people over.
But we did do:
Lots of drawing, mostly from nature guides or non-fiction books.
Poem writing - Lucy entered a local poetry contest - and won! She wrote several before picking this as her favorite. I don't assign creative writing but I do count it as school when it happens spontaneously ;-) She was supposed to read it at a poetry reading but i'm pretty sure that will be canceled.
Half of Hamet - Lucy hates listening to the archangel production that everyone else (including myself) seems to like so we only did it on days when we both coudl talk but hey, we did half of it! And watched select scenes thanks to David Tennant and Youtube.
An art project- We had to cancel on our teacher multiple times but they did get one bigger project completed. And it turned out great.
A trip to the symphony. Luckily this one happened after the flu but before the second round hit us so we could attend. This particular kid's show focused on rhythm and meter and how changing those changed the style of the song. We had just been working on rhytm and meter in our Music of the Hemispheres book which was perfect timing!
And we took exactly one nature trip but at least it was a good one. We went to the world bird sanctuary and got there just as one on of the workers was starting to feed them. So we followed him around and got to watch all the daytime birds get there meals. He was very gracious to tell us about each one as we went along too. It was one of the few times we saw friends and I got some good pictures but since the friends were in them too, all I'm going to show you is this nice bird.
We didn't make it far in our handicraft lessons but we did do lots of free time as individuals. Some needle felting. Lucy got a kit but I had some extra roving for Jonah and Norah.
Jonah actually figured out how to use a cookie cutter as a mold and make solid shapes and taught Norah. I've got a couple needle felting books on hold from the library. It's a lot of fun although a bit challenging when Jude wants to crawl in my lap everytime I look like I'm having fun without him.
I'm trying my hand at it too.
Soap carving was our planned handicraft. We only did it once with our friends before we all got sick but last week I wasn't feeling good but decided to just give them the book and let them experiement without me and they did pretty well. They made a huge mess and I'm pretty sure Jude tasted the soap several times before giving up on the idea but you can't say it isn't a timely handicraft!
Lucy also did some basketweaving from a kit she got for Christmas.
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