End of the School Year

Yesterday afternoon, we met with our ES for the final time this year and turned in the last of the paperwork. In the evening, we attended our charter's promotion ceremony. Our official school year has come to a close, although the learning never stops.

I need to distance myself a bit from this past year to see it more clearly. At this point, I have some things that I need to think through before August. I have concerns about the logistics of homeschooling three students at once. (Galen will turn four at the end of September, and I want to make a conscious effort to give him something more structured.) I would like to encourage the boys to be more self motivated in their studies, although I have no idea how to accomplish that tonight. Of course, I continue to debate the best balance between book work and activities and field trips.

Fortunately, I can put those concerns aside for a bit. We reached a stopping point in our curriculum last Tuesday. Since then, the boys have not stopped. In the past week, they used their recently required library cards to check out huge stacks of books which they are plowing through. (The cards have also been great for instilling a sense of responsibility as well.) Landry has been helping more with the cooking. Jerry decided to invest in a state parks pass this year, and we enjoyed an amazing walk where the boys spent their time examining everything with such enthusiasm.

Each Christmas, I put aside a couple of Christmas presents for the boys to enjoy later in the year. This week, both boys became very interested in building with this hydrodynamics set. (And my dining room table sustained no major damage!!) Later, Kipp and I spent a fun morning, creating a cog train from this physics workshop. At the same time, Landry discovered the fun in attempting a planned art project from this endlessly creative blog by Kathy Barbro. As I hoped, the planned project spurred his own creativity. He went on to paint several more pictures that showed a change in his use of materials.

Saturday night, we packed a picnic and enjoyed a wonderful, open-air performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Sunday night, we finally finished watching Lewis and Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery.

This afternoon, we discovered a delightful little toy shop with a wonderful selection of board games. We ended up buying three new games: Quoridor, Squared Up!, and Katamino. The boys spent some time playing the two last games and really seemed to enjoy Squared Up! I know I enjoyed the relative peace and quiet!

Later this week, we intend to return to the Lawrence Hall of Science. Each time we have driven to the hall this past year for homeschool classes, I have been forced to drag the boys past the exhibits and into the car because of the complexities of traffic in the Bay Area. On this trip, however, we are going with the express purpose of letting the boys explore to their hearts' content. I think they will love it.

I signed Kipp and Landry up for a week-long theater camp this summer. I am also trying to get them back to chess lessons, and we have a pool pass. Other than that, we have made no definite plans this summer.

I can't wait to see where the summer takes us!