Sunday, June 13, 2010

Another Academic Year Has Come and Gone


Yet another school year has been completed. The requisite hours have been documented and counted and I am now in the process of writing a final summary of accomplishments for this year. Although this is not required by law in our state, I find it encouraging to review what we have done throughout the year. I believe that I will create a yearbook of sorts for each of the boys by picking photos from all of our activities and having them printed in book format at one of those photo developing sites. It will be exciting have a visual synopsis of the school year. Of course, this blog serves that purpose for me. I rather enjoy perusing the blog, seeing where we have been and what we have done.
As I was perusing the blog recently I came to notice just how little I had posted in 2010 and have determined to rectify that situation. I will attempt to review just a bit about what has happened between March and the end of our school year, May 31.
As the end of the school year draws near I always feel compelled to tie up what I perceive as loose ends. Such as, last summer we read the Percy Jackson series and had hoped to see The Lightning Thief movie so that we might do a comparative analysis. We missed the movie when it initially came out but were able to see it at the cheapie theater here at the end of the year.
Also, towards the beginning of the school year I introduced the boys to Laura Ingalls Wilder and her Little House on the Prairie. It has since been my intention to take them to the home in which Laura was living when she wrote her books, the home in which she and Almanzo raised their daughter, Rose. It is located in Mansfield, Missouri, which is not terribly far from where we live. Among many other artifacts, the museum houses Pa Ingalls fiddle that we hear so much about in her books. I wish that I had pictures of the museum to share with you but photography was prohibited within the museum. But below is the home that Rose was raised in and that Laura wrote her books in. Within the home is her writing desk which remains just as it was at her death. It was a great field trip.



It was also my intention to get the boys to the Titanic Museum in Branson, Missouri and this spring they periodically had reduced rates for homeschoolers allowing us to finally make this trip. It was fantastic! Prior to entering the museum they assign you a person that was actually on the Titanic and they encourage you to find information and artifacts related to your person throughout the course of the tour. At the end of the tour you discover whether or not your person survived or not. There is also an interactive portion that included a tank of water kept at the same temperature as the ocean was on the date that the liner sank. You are encouraged to place your hand in the water and time the length at which you are able to keep your hand in the water. No one in our group lasted longer then a minute and a half.


After the field trip to the Titanic museum, we were inspired to build this model that I have had sitting on a shelf for years. It is so cool!



I also took the boys to George Washington Carver National Monument in Diamond, Missouri. This is one of my favorite places to visit. This gentleman is so inspiring. If you don't know much about him I highly recommend learning more about him.











We also did a host of other things, such as:

Star Wars day at the library!


A trip to the nature center.


A service project - giving books to WIC families in memory of a baby that died in our church family.

And to finish out the school year we had a picnic...


...and some water play...


...and we recognized Memorial Day. We did so by going to a national cemetery. So many American wars were represented in this cemetery. It was profound and humbling.

In memory of those who fought in the Revolutionary War.

The Spanish American War.
World War II.
This is the view of the cemetery from the Vietnam War memorial.

But the cemetery began during the Civil War after the Wilson's Creek Battle and the Battle for Springfield.




Nathaniel Lyon - the first Union General to be killed during combat.


We wanted to honor those who have fought for our country in some special way. We took flowers to the cemetery and placed them on graves as we felt moved.










Some favorite photos...





My sister, Roxie, and my niece, Samantha and my grand nephew, Maddox joined me and my kiddos on this excursion. I believe that this will be a new tradition for our family.

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