Well, the official school year has come to a close & it was a good one, quite possibly the best we have ever had! I think this is due to the addition of converting the home office to a school room, the age of my little students & of course, God's grace in building a special bond through learning together.
In the past I have divided Classical Conversations and our actual school at the Nest but over the years they have become so intertwined it makes sense to keep them together. That's the beauty of learning overflowing into all areas. That being said, it's just a long post.
We will begin with the last day of school. Once Covid-19 started, weeks 19-24 of our Classical Conversations year was completed via Zoom & it went surprisingly well. The kids adapted to a completely different experience, some struggled more than others.....like three brothers ; ) We have a different family presentation each week on community day & that continued through Zoom.
Our family was the final week & while Robby didn't get to join us due to a meeting, he sported his jersey in honor of our Australia themed presentation. We started with saying "G'day mates," which my children thought was so funny. I shared our family history of Australia beginning 17 years ago when Robby moved there, my visit & our engagement & our special friends we miss dearly. The kids picked facts to share. Charlotte spoke about the didgeridoo and attempted playing it, Eloise talked about Rugby, Owen was all about the AU Zoo & some animals native to the country while Anson showed a boomerang. Little Arlo, oh my. It's a good thing he's cute! The entire time others were talking, he was sticking his face in view of the camera & holding things up next to the presenter yet when it was his turn he crawled under the table as fast as possible and refused to play the drum he promised he would play. It made us laugh AND is a great family video.
Let's move along through the year in no chronological order. The kiddos favorite part of our day other than recess is piling in the school room snuggled with blankets & ready to listen to a read-aloud. We enjoyed a new CC book that was published last year called Old World Echoes. It lined up with our weekly memory work with History & Geography & was filled with stories from all around the world. Some were fairy tales, some set in Medieval times & each week contained a poem. I think we enjoyed Robin Hood & Rumpelstiltskin the most although they did have more than a few giggles about the birthday suits in The Elves & the Shoemaker....eye roll. They usually had a piece of paper to draw or write down what they heard. That is a win-win for everyone just about every time I read- aloud. Here they are minus Charlotte who likes a little personal space.
This was year SEVEN of CC which is hard to believe! My sweet friend Courtney taught Owen's and Anson's class. They had a lot of energy ; )
After two years with the 4-5 year olds, I jumped up to the 8 year old class and LOVED my time with Eloise & her buddies! It was really fun to have kids that could read and follow simple directions like "sit in your chair and don't touch your neighbor."
Charlotte was with another friend named Leslie. I would have enjoyed spending time watching her model teaching through all of our segments each Monday. She is creative & intelligent. Minus the fact that there were only two girls in the class, Charlotte had a great year.
Arlo has come a LONG way from the first two years when he cried so much that I strapped him into a stroller, rolled him into my classroom & that little dear sucked his thumb while rubbing his belly button for two hours. Jones is his best bud ever & belongs to Courtney. They are happy as can be when together & we can't believe that they will start Foundations class in the fall!
Here is Courtney, mama to the blondie pictured above. This was crazy sock day : )
We have a map challenge each year where every student has the opportunity to turn in 4 maps per week. They can be traced or hand drawn with older kids labeling countries within continents. Our goal this year was 2,020 maps to represent our year. Our class total was 459! My class has won three years in a row which means that the 4-5 year olds beat the big kids the past 2 years! We won the semester total with 302 & got a donut party. We also award the top kid in each class at the end of the year. Charlotte won for her class & Eloise tied for top in hers.
Geography is a favorite at the Nest. We draw maps everyday & have begun a lot more hand drawn rather than traced. I am blown away at their precision. Owen & Anson mastered drawing and labeling the Circles of Latitude, the Prime Meridian, continents & oceans. Can't wait to see what they can accomplish next year. For Challenge A which is the equivalent of 7th grade, the students finish off the year by drawing the entire world & labeling countries and capitals. They should be able to do it from memory. These two girls are well on their way. Here are Charlotte's maps followed by one of Eloise's.
Even Arlo learned his continents this year! He knows a song that includes "Kangaroos hopping in Australia, Penguins waddling in Anarctica." It took us quite some time to wean him off the song & just say the continent name, ha! I laminated this one & put Velcro sticky tabs on it. At the end of the year, I switched him over to looking at a few other maps to correlate continent shapes without the colors he is used to. Next year my goal is to have him trace a blob map then draw by himself. It's always amazing what they can do! Like that bump on his noggin?
A week in Science that we all enjoyed was learning about vibration, pitch and frequency with our very own bottle organ. The kids got to take turns blowing across the opening and playing with the spoons. They were so funny with their rhythms and dancing.
Charlotte completed year two of Essentials which is an English Grammar & writing course. I SO enjoy each week of being in class with her! I have learned more than I expected to & sure love watching her interact with her teacher and classmates. They write and read a paper to their class each week and for the final week, they present in a Faces of History day. We studied World Wars I & II during the second semester and she read about Anne Frank. She was the perfect character for Charlotte and we learned much about life over the course of those years for a young Jewish girl. I found it very helpful to lead into conversations about the time period through the story Anne told. It was a cheap costume with my sweater and earrings, a printed Star of David taped on & a journal wrapped in some fabric we had. She was overjoyed to be presenting on Zoom from the waist up so she didn't have to wear dress shoes, haha! That's my girl! Her paper was incredible and we were so proud of her.
Speaking of Zoom, here was a morning and afternoon....
One of the first weeks, kids could present on their pets & Anson talked about his new Sea Monkeys....oh my, it made me giggle! Prior to the crippling Coronavirus, there were a variety of topics including Ireland for Owen, Spain for Anson & the Redwood Tree for Eloise. She prepped with Dad on that one and her drawings were beautiful & detailed as usual as she compared height with the Statue of Liberty and a Blue Whale. Charlotte was the master of reading, jotting down & reciting to near perfections.
While Charlotte & I were in class Monday afternoons the other four were in an art class where they focused on the techniques of artists in the Middle Ages. During the week where they studied the Italian painter, Giotto, they created quite the masterpieces! He lived in the 1300s and one thing he was famous for was painting halos around the subject's heads. They were painted and/or made of gold leaf. In order from left to right, Eloise, Owen, Anson & Arlo. Anson painted Robby with a beard (picture number 3) & it might be a favorite for a LONG time, ha!
Charlotte was a blast to teach this year. I am always apprehensive of a new year with an older kid thinking about how I don't know anything about teaching that age. I am always learning something new to teach her and to help her mature. I think we were working on some math in the picture below. I love how there is a picture of some animal with the word "poop" next to it. The joy of un monitored markers & gross kids ; )
Speaking of un-monitored markers, after a spelling lesson about how the vowel directly before an "r" often follows the sound of the "bossy r," someone had added on a picture and my name calling me bossy. I always remind them that I am supposed to be bossy, since I'm the mama right?
There was a conversion of an awful green office to a lovely gray school room complete with new chairs, boards & decor, a built out closet to house supplies collected over the years and even a little corner for Arlo. It has been SO wonderful! I am thankful that Robby was willing to give up the little space that was his. It is a joke now that the garage is all he has left and we all dump junk in there all the time ; )
Here is Arlo's little corner where he gets to learn about the calendar and all sorts of other things. Those letter magnets were an Ellis family original from the 80s. They are well loved around here! I told Robby that I'm sure he had no idea how cute his safe could be with all the magnetic additions! It sure is convenient & he doesn't seem to mind.
Science experiments for the last six weeks were super fun including constructing towers, bridges, catapults, paper airplanes and our very favorite, egg protectors. Eloise and all three boys made their own which we tested from the top of the playground. It has been absolutely wonderful to have Robby home especially when he gets to come participate. All the eggs survived! I think the secret was a blown up ziploc bag & duct tape underneath. I would not have survived catapult week without Robby's assistance!
Everything is more fun with food so we learned about the phases of the moon with Oreo cookies...I'm not sure if anyone actually learned anything but they were happy ; )
Anson needs a little more work with his spelling. "Stoopid is as stoopid does sir" said a nice man with the last name Gump.
Charlotte can be found helping others whether they like it or not. She is actually a huge help to me as she reads to or plays with Arlo or sits on Eloise so she can't run away during a lesson ; )
Charlotte also plays photographer & snapped this picture of us reading one afternoon. It's not a surprise that our best days are days when we read the most. Even the girls still enjoy a good picture book & the boys have finally become accustomed to chapter books with no pictures. It's fantastic to be in a place that I never thought we would reach!
That picture looks so peaceful and the things we have photographed over the last year of learning make it look delightful. In a grumpy mess this afternoon, following an awful math lesson and a sibling brawl of ugly words, everyone was put in solitary confinement for an hour while I took a breather.
I had lost my temper and thought about how hard it is to do this all day long everyday. I grabbed my computer and began this post and the Lord used it to refresh my soul. He used it to remind me that there are more enjoyable days than stinky ones, that we are capable of having fun, that I'm not a grump all the time and this opportunity is priceless. They are still so young and I am thankful for the years ahead! There are many a conversation to be had and likely many more tears shed on my part as I strive to lead them well and fight feeling like a failure. God knows my deepest desires and my deepest struggles. He doesn't leave me and I know he will sustain me in the coming days, weeks, months, years of this homeschooling journey.
