Antarctica, Weeks 33 & 34 and EPCOT!

Oh wow! We are finished with school for the year! I can't believe we are done! It's been quite a journey as well as a huge blessing! I am reminded every day of how fortunate we are to be able to have our girls at home. I can say, without a doubt, that even on our worst homeschool days I know they are where they are supposed to be and we are doing what we are supposed to be doing. God has given these girls to us for a short time and we are doing what we can to "train them up in the way they should go."


So, our last weeks! We had to finish up our My Father's World, Exploring Countries and Cultures with Antarctica. Kaylin and Annlee had to finish English, and Maryella was continuing to "play" online on Reading Eggs. Then we got a call that my sister was going to have her baby! So, we packed our bags and our books and headed north to welcome the newest member of our family! (Have I mentioned that I love homeschooling and the flexibility it allows us?!?!) Here is precious little Hudson being held by Elianna. Ah! I love him! I'm having some serious Hudson withdrawals now that we are back home!


The poor little guy ended up needing to be put on a bilibed because he was slightly jaundiced. It was hard not to hold him, but it allowed us to feel like we weren't missing out on snuggle time by doing school. Here are the girls and their cousin, Payton - Hudson's big sister, doing some school work at Aunt Linny's dining room table. These are 5 precious girls!


We did several science experiments to help us understand Antarctica. Here, we felt the difference in the temperature of a piece of ice in our bare hand versus inside a baggie of crisco (blubber).


We froze a big chunk of ice and let it float to see just how much of an iceberg is submerged in the ocean.


We had several vocabulary words that we defined and drew. I think they are drawing glaciers here.


We did school at Marmie and Granda's house a couple mornings.


Even though we were out of town, we still got our Antarctica lapbooks done. Instead of drawing the flag of Antarctica (there is none), we drew what we thought the flag would look like if they had one. That was neat to see what the girls came up with. This is the inside of Maryella's lapbook and you can see her flag at the top.


They illustrated the front of their lapbooks.


Inside, we included some illustrated facts of Antarctica. These are Kaylin's.


They drew things that you can find in Antarctica. These are Annlee's drawings.


Maryella showed Marmie how she does Reading Eggs.


Here is Kaylin taking her final English test!


When we got back home the next week, we wrapped up a few loose ends, Annlee did her last two days of English, we got things packed up and ready for our upcoming evaluation, and then we celebrated being FINISHED by spending a day at Epcot in Orlando. It was a perfect end to our fabulous year! I made "passports" that they took to each country and got them stamped and signed and had to answer a few questions. We tasted some small snack at each country as well - that was my favorite part! It was a long, fun day. Here are just a few of the pictures I took of our grand finale field trip!

Canada:


United Kingdom


France:



Morocco:


Japan:


United States:


Italy:


Germany:


China:



Norway:



Mexico:


Watching the fireworks:


The only group shot of the day:


So, that's it! Our first year is in the books! I'm still a little shocked. Honestly, it seemed too easy. We are all looking forward to August when we will start back up again. In the meantime, we will be doing a little reviewing, a little resting, and a little playing. The homeschool convention is this weekend, so Jeff and I are looking forward to that - it's a time of wonderful encouragement and learning, but also a good chance to get away, just the two of us. After that, we have dance recitals, church activities (I will have a youth... a middle schooler!! Yikes!), beach trips, family time... it will be busy but fun! I pray each of you has a great summer as well! God bless!

Australia, Weeks 31 and 32

We had so much fun in Australia! It was definitely one of my favorite countries of the year, and I think the girls felt the same way. We began our study with discussions about the coral reef. The girls were fascinated with this! They had a wonderful time making their own coral reef dioramas on the backporch one day.





We located various places in Australia on a map. They were pretty good at spotting them!


We talked about all the animals from Australia and drew several of them. We made koalas out of peanut butter one day. This was fun, but oh so messy!


We got a nerf boomerang and practiced throwing it. We had tons of fun doing it but never could get it to come back to us.


We tasted kiwi one day and talked about the kiwi bird, both of which are native to New Zealand.


We finished off Australia with dinner at the Outback one night. What a treat!


We did lapbooks, but I somehow missed taking pictures of those and we are out of town as I'm posting this. I might try to add them when we get back home, but you know how things go...

The girls finished their math curriculums during these two weeks! They were so excited!


We did a quick unit on telling time. It was review for the older two, but for Maryella it was mostly new. She caught on very quickly and was even able to figure out how many times you'd have to count to 60 if you had an hour and a half left on a trip to Tampa, lol.


Kaylin and Annlee have been taking a sewing class with a friend and made these pillows this week! They were so proud!