That’s a wrap!

After approximately 186 days of school (probably a few more…I sometimes forget to record field trip days!), we have finished the 2012-13 school year!

We did a lot of work this week (unlike, say, the public school, which appears to have been on vacation for the last two weeks of classes!). We had to finish up American history from Nixon to the present (a lot of fun stuff to explain in there!). We had math lessons to complete, and reading lessons for Ladybug, who finally made it through the whole alphabet, and all 27 of her “Fun Tales” readers! Turkey and Bunny also finished their spelling books, and one last writing assignment. We haven’t finished our read-aloud, but we can continue reading that for fun every day!

We also had some fun this week! On Thursday, Bunny, Ladybug, and I went strawberry-picking at Eckert’s, which seemed fitting since we went apple picking during our first week of the school year. Turkey, unfortunately, was sick, but he wanted us to go anyway, which was very kind of him. We had a fun time in the strawberry fields…it was the first time any of us had picked strawberries!

Today, after our last two tests of the year, we had a tea party for Pentecost. We were supposed to have it on Pentecost itself, but I ran out of time, and since it’s still Pentecost week, I figured I could still use red as a theme!

We also built the Lego Brandenburg Gate, a special project to tie into our studies of WWII and the Cold War/fall of the Berlin Wall. Since we waited until this afternoon to work on it, Moose got to join in, too! I love the Lego Architecture series, and can’t wait to see what other Landmarks they may come up with that I can use for school!

It’s been a great school year. There were tough times, trying to figure out how to balance three students in two grades, with an infant (and then toddler!), besides. There were challenges as I had to look for new materials to use for Ladybug when some of the things I used for Turkey and Bunny didn’t work for her. There was the difficulty of trying to teach long division! But the good times and the successes and fun events far outweighed any problems we came across. We’ve finished five years of homeschooling, and I’m already looking forward to year six…see you in August!