This morning, as I was lying in bed wishing the kids would sleep in longer than they do, I thought about what I could do today to get ready for the upcoming school year. I realized I had never posted about what we did to end the last school year!
When we were at the charter school, they held a Celebration of Learning twice a year. The children planned this event and got to show their families what they had learned about. My kids enjoyed them, so when we received The Family School curriculum, I was excited to see these celebrations were part of their suggestions! I wanted to make our first year of homeschooling memorable, so we tried to include most of what was suggested.
When we finished a book in our literature study, we had a celebration. For Little House in the Big Woods, we played games, made shot pouches, and made snow candy.
When we finished The Comedy of Errors, we went to see the play. We were lucky that our local Polar Star group was doing it the day after we finished reading!
In science we studied zoology. We have a membership to the new aquarium, so we made another visit. A couple weeks after school was out, our local zoo opened up their new exhibit, the African Savanna. We had to visit that as well!
For geography we invited a neighbor over who had served his mission in Japan. He taught us a lot about the country and culture and shared some Japanese snacks with us. The kids still talk about this night.
After that, we had to visit an Asian market to buy more Japanese snacks, and to buy some foods to prepare for our final celebration night.
We invited family members over for our presentation. We turned our backyard into a museum. We hung our posters and artwork on the garden fence, and placed some things on tables for display. Of course a storm started blowing in, so we had to take a lot of it inside. The kids got to be Museum Guides for the night.
I didn't ask permission to share our families photos here, so they are happy faces. As always :)
We served dinner to everyone. The kids chose 2 foods from the country they had studied and we prepared them. Except the sushi... I wasn't about to prepare sushi in addition to the other dishes. The food was delicious. Our signs kept blowing over though!
After dinner the kids presented their country reports. They did a great job!
We really enjoyed our first year of The Family School. As soon as we were finished, the kids started begging me to start year 2!
When we were at the charter school, they held a Celebration of Learning twice a year. The children planned this event and got to show their families what they had learned about. My kids enjoyed them, so when we received The Family School curriculum, I was excited to see these celebrations were part of their suggestions! I wanted to make our first year of homeschooling memorable, so we tried to include most of what was suggested.
When we finished a book in our literature study, we had a celebration. For Little House in the Big Woods, we played games, made shot pouches, and made snow candy.
In science we studied zoology. We have a membership to the new aquarium, so we made another visit. A couple weeks after school was out, our local zoo opened up their new exhibit, the African Savanna. We had to visit that as well!
For geography we invited a neighbor over who had served his mission in Japan. He taught us a lot about the country and culture and shared some Japanese snacks with us. The kids still talk about this night.
We invited family members over for our presentation. We turned our backyard into a museum. We hung our posters and artwork on the garden fence, and placed some things on tables for display. Of course a storm started blowing in, so we had to take a lot of it inside. The kids got to be Museum Guides for the night.
We served dinner to everyone. The kids chose 2 foods from the country they had studied and we prepared them. Except the sushi... I wasn't about to prepare sushi in addition to the other dishes. The food was delicious. Our signs kept blowing over though!
After dinner the kids presented their country reports. They did a great job!
We really enjoyed our first year of The Family School. As soon as we were finished, the kids started begging me to start year 2!
What an awesome first year!
ReplyDeleteIt was a great night, I was glad to be able to see what the kids had learned that year! I'm looking forward to the next one as well. :)
ReplyDelete