Year 5 Celebration of Learning

We made it through the school year! June has been SOOOO busy that we had to schedule our Celebration of Learning at the end of the month. We studied South America this year. Some of our family members are Brazilian and some have visited other South American countries, so we really enjoyed this school year and celebration. Our Brazilian family taught me a couple of recipes, and the children found other recipes they wanted to try. Here's what our celebration was like!

Mmmmm... a basket full of pao de queijo, Brazilian cheese bread. My sister-in-law taught me to always make extra!

Year 5 Celebrations

We've finished up Family School Year 5! Here are some highlights from our end of year/unit celebrations.

Literature:

The last book we studied was Hans Brinker or The Silver Skates. We played some Dutch games and tried some Dutch recipes. We ate pannekoeken (like crepes) one day and apple pannekoeken (we call this a German Pancake, but this one has apples) another day. We played koekhappen with doughnuts. Some of us put together crafts of Sinterklaas, Black Piet, and Horse Winky.

koekhappen

Weekly Recap: With the retirement and the fire

The end is in sight! One more week of school and then I can focus on some other business that we've got going on.

Last Sunday M and I attended an indexing class at church. We learned how to use the new web based indexing program on FamilySearch.org. I'm so excited that we can index on our Chromebook now. We went to my parents for a birthday/mother's day dinner. My kids and husband spoiled me with cards, flowers, chocolates, and Willow Tree figurines that represent my children. I am so blessed to have amazing kids and a wonderful husband.

Monday was our history lesson on the War of 1812. The kids gave the dog a bath.

How We Homeschool: Occasions (Blogging Through the Alphabet)

Occasions? I mean fun days! O is a hard letter to work with.

We like to plan fun days into our homeschool schedule. I've already talked about celebrations. Other fun occasions are park days, fieldtrips, and other days that you don't do school at home in the traditional manner.

How We Homeschool: Family School (Blogging Through the Alphabet)

This is probably our favorite post in this series. It's a new week, the letter F is up, and I'm blogging about Family School!

 

How We Homeschool: Celebrations (Blogging Through the Alphabet)

What does a celebration have to do with homeschool? So much, you'll probably want to start holding them if you aren't already!

When we attended a charter school, one of my children's favorite things was the Celebration of Learning that was held twice a year. The children had studied a topic and then presented what they learned to their families in an evening get together. My kids said they would miss this when we started to homeschool. When we received The Family School curriculum, I quickly noticed that they suggested the same thing!

Year 3 Celebration of Learning

I think this was our favorite end of year celebration yet!  We studied Antarctica, Australia, and the Pacific Islands this year.  You can read more about our mini celebrations and presentations here.  The children prepared reports on a Pacific island so we chose to dress up and make food that went along with their choices.  We invited twice as many people this year so I was nervous about having enough food and getting everything ready, but I think it went alright.  There was even a surprise at the end!

End of Unit Celebrations 2016

Whenever we finish up a topic or unit, we have a small celebration for what we've studied.  Here are some of the celebrations we held this year. 

When we finished studying the explorers we had a dinner with many of the foods that they would have had on their ships, as well as the foods they would have found in the New World.  Some were honey, hard cheeses (we found cheese from Spain at the grocery store!), olives, lentils, and raisins.  We also had 100% cacao bars, potatoes, peppers, peanuts, avocado, winter squash, and papaya.  We folded newspaper sailor hats and made deviled eggs with sails and peppers with sails.  We drew the earth on transparent plastic to make sun catchers, and played some dice games.  Sadly, I can't find these pictures...

Week 24: 52 in 2016

We're getting ready for our third annual Celebration of Learning!  Today my daughter and I worked on her costume.  Here's a little glimpse as she was putting it together.  We are so excited, this might be our best celebration yet!

Cytology crafts

We finished our introduction to cytology last week.  Instead of a regular lesson on our science day, we had a cell-abration!  We have been learning about organelles and their functions as well as the differences between plant and animal cells.  Cell division was a difficult topic with big words for some of them, but I've been surprised at how much information they retained.  Learning about prokaryotic cells was exciting and has helped reinforce some good habits.  We also talked about many scientists who influenced our knowledge today, and how we are thankful for their work.

Year 2 Celebration of Learning

Update:  I completely forgot to add our Geography celebration!  I didn't take any pictures because I was enthralled in the presentation.  My parents went to Europe on a Sound of Music tour about 8 years ago.  They went on a guided tour through many countries then spent extra time on their own.  They talked about the many things they saw, showed us pictures, maps, and books from their trip.  It was so neat!  

Recently we held our 2nd annual celebration of learning.  We turn our backyard into a museum and show all the projects we’ve worked on this past school year.  While the children act as tour guides, the grandparents, aunts, and uncles get to see all we’ve been learning about.  With 4 kids this turns out to be a lot of projects, but it’s so fun to see how they create each item in their own way.

 

Year 1 Celebration of Learning

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!