Almost Done With School!!

At the homeschool group Spring Fling, displaying her volcano and artwork!

Well, we have almost survived the whole school year of homeschooling with Madelynn!! We joined a local homeschool group at the beginning of this year, and it has been a great fellowship of moms, a lot of which go to our church, who are encouraging in what we are all doing at home with our kids. I have made some good new friends who are doing the same things I am doing everyday and that is a huge thing to have in common with other moms!!

The kids got to feel the sting rays at the Aquarium!

School certainly got a little crazier when Ruth came along! We took a couple of weeks off school, but then we got right back into it so that we can finish in some time to have a summer break!! At the moment we are doing 6 school days in a week so we can finish by mid-June. We will definitely be ready for a break!! We recently visited a new homeschool group called Classical Conversations that meets once a week and holds classes for homeschoolers. Maddy's age group meets for 3 hours and they study lots of things and learn by way of song and other fun methods. They learn pretty advanced things at this age, but they make it fun and easy for them to learn, and it makes it easier for them to learn things when they get older because they have already learned the basics. When we visited, they were learning a verse in Latin, the distributive law (a basis for algebra), prominent features in the United States, the Bill of Rights, orchestra, and more. We were really impressed with the program, and are excited that Maddy will be in it next year!! We will do homeschool during the week, and then once a week she will go to these classes, and we will expound on this learning throughout the week as well.

Maddy visiting the Classical Conversations class

I am so glad I stuck with homeschooling this year. It was rough at first, I'm not gonna lie, and I wasn't totally into it. But it has been a great year and I'm really pleased with Maddy's progress. I feel like I must have done something right! Honestly, I pretty much put together the pieces for her kindergarten year. I used books that my mother-in-law gave me, and then added workbooks that I already had, and everyday we had an "other" category where we worked on states, capitals, counting, time, tying shoes, drawing, etc. We had field trips with the homeschool group to see a threshing bee, aquarium, a medic-vac helicopter, pottery/wool class, and a day with a lady from Critter Tales who talked to the kids and showed them live Oklahoma animals.

Touching a skunk at the Critter Tales day

I'm excited to plan her first grade year, possibly go to the upcoming Homeschool Convention, get the ball rolling with Classical Conversations, and rest with our summer break!! I love homeschooling, but the summer will be a nice hiatus from doing the work all throughout the week!!

Inspecting different things at Critter Tales

Just had to include a pic of the kids!!