Spring Catch-up

Now that our school year is finally over, I just want to get everything blogged so I can move on to summer.  I don't think I've ever been so ready for the end of a school year, and that's saying something because I'm burned out every May.  This year I think I mentally checked out around May 1.  Actually, I don't think I ever really found my groove again after breaking my foot at the end of March, but I managed to somewhat hold it together for another month.  I had planned so well, too.  I had super fun activities scheduled the entire month of May, but could barely drag myself out of my funk to do any of them.  I have never had a homeschooling month quite like that.  We did barely enough to be able to count each day for our 180.  Oh well, here's on to next year.  I'm hoping a good summer vacation will do the trick.  I'm already planning our block for May of next year and making sure that it will be 100% ready to go so I don't have to use my brain for anything when the time comes.  I'm also making sure that we are 100% done with academics by that point in the year so we can simply have fun with Pennsylvania history and go on tons of field trips.

So here's a record of the past few months.

In April I did some handwork:

Needle-felted Mother Nature and Root Babies.

Knitted gnome for Preston.

One evening I got talked into letting the kids build a fire.  That happens regularly:

(Preston did not build the fire; he's just enjoying the effects.)

Since this was Sariah's Old Testament year, I did pull it together so we could observe Passover.

Sariah and Preston and I made these paintings of the Burning Bush after telling the story.  Sariah had done this story earlier in the year and painted at that time, but she didn't mind doing another one. (Sariah's painting on the top, Preston's on the bottom.)

This was our dinner with lamb, charoset, bitter herbs, and unleavened bread.  The dinner itself was not a hit, but the whole thing was still a good experience.

On May 1 we celebrated May Day, all by ourselves in our own backyard.  It was kind of a make-shift May Day.

Sariah made our maypole out of a handle.

Preston just stood there and looked cute.

Our last two weeks of the year we focused on gardening.  Earlier in May we worked to clear out a space in the front yard to plant wildflowers and to clear out a space in the garden to plant strawberries.

We had a fun family outing at Penn State to watch our alma mater BYU play volleyball in the men's national finals.

I took Sariah and Preston on a field trip to an herb farm nearby.  

They had a yurt, which was so fun for Sariah after we had studied yurts in our shelters block earlier in the year.

They also had a straw bale house.

Preston loved this spiral path and wanted to walk/run it over and over.

Our yard in spring just as the trees were leafing out.

And a sweet surprise--a robin's nest on our back light.

A few weeks later, I took Sariah back to the herb farm for a special activity day they held for kids.  They taught the children how to build shelters from found materials in the woods.

They also had stilts, tug-o-war, and other old-fashioned games for the kids, which Sariah loved.

Sariah's handwork--a knitted pig for Preston.