It seems odd to be back here documenting this moment after skipping all the covid crud that hit us and our homeschool over the past 14+ months. So many things I could have blogged about, but didn't. Somehow the last year+ of homeschool has totally drained me and blogging felt like the last thing on my list. Actually, it never made the list.
Nevertheless, I couldn't let this huge milestone go undocumented. These graduations represent the culmination of so much effort, patience, emotion, and excitement for what lies ahead. I never envisioned this when I decided to start homeschooling 13 years ago. But what a sweet, tender and memorable day we shared at Camila's graduation this weekend. It wasn't perfect (is it ever?) but it was wonderful. I was surprised when my 18-yo said that this graduation was better than a ceremony with hundreds of other graduates. It was a sweet family moment that we all appreciated very much. I'm so thrilled for her and all of her accomplishments. She truly has earned the tassel!
First, let me share some pictures of a "friend" ceremony that we had back earlier this month with other graduating seniors from church and their parents. It was hosted by a family we worship with and planned by another graduate mom. It was beautiful and memorable as well. We enjoyed having Camila to ourselves that night as we celebrated her efforts to graduate.
Camila was blessed with a wonderful friend group! I'm so happy she had all of these beautiful friends (and more!) to share her high school years with her. I know they will always be close over the years.
That was May 1. Meanwhile, we were preparing for a family graduation that all the kids could participate in. First, I made the diploma with Camila's input using Canva. I printed it on special paper. I think it turned out well. I ordered the diploma case and her cap and gown from Amazon. Seriously, I think her diploma is way nicer than the one I got!
Here's the program I created using Canva
I planned out some awards for her (also designed on Canva). They each had a dollar value, but I'll leave that off for now. It wasn't much!
Then it was time to decorate!!
We rolled out the red carpet for our Graduates! Too bad that June let go of the 12 helium balloons I had purchased at party city earlier that day. Sigh. Oh well, Dan went to Dollar Tree and replaced them with even better balloons. It turned out great.
We took pictures
Then we had a dinner of southwest fajitas and corn on the cob. MMMM.
And then the ceremony began!
Our procession had a few hiccups. Here's a portion of the video (without the huge bucket of water that fell over at the beginning knocking over our flag and splashing me big time)
As parents, we had the opportunity to speak first. I think there were more tears than words. It was very heartfelt.
Our second daughter had beautiful things to say as well that made us both laugh and cry.
Bud had a few words to say
Then we heard from our 10 yo. So sweet.
Next, our graduate spoke.
AFter the awards were handed out we took some more pictures and played with our 2021 sparklers.
This is the painting Sof made for her big sister
After that, we cleaned up a little and went out for ice cream.
The littles fell asleep on the way home. It felt like a really happy, joyful night with a bitter-sweet realization that we are now entering a new phase of parenting when our kids will begin to come and go, but never really stay with us for long. This fall, there will be one less place to set at teh table, an extra seat in the car on our way to church, and more hot water to share in the shower.
It's all ok. This is how it goes. We are happy that she is ready and capable to head out into the world to find her own way.
Just don't be surprised if you find me sitting on her bed, alone in her room, crying one last time.
The co-op we are attending this year has offered a wide range of field trips for our family to participate in, should we choose. I really appreciate this so much because a lot of times I just forget to plan field trips or I am to busy to make the phone calls or order tickets or plan outings.
As always, I've not kept a good record of late. But while it's on my mind I thought I'd post pics of a few trips that we took and I actually remembered to grab a photo or two.
ONE: DNA Electrophoresis at the NC State Museum of Natural Science
This was a great one! I was impressed with the quality of the lab, lab equipment, and instruction. For ten bucks two of my kids got to be real scientists and analyse the DNA of various corn kernels to determine if they contain a gene for fungus, which would in turn determine if the plant variety could be recommended for planting.
My 9th grader came out spewing all kinds of facts and gave me a lengthy, detailed description of the entire process. I retained about 12% of it. But I was just glad to see that she was so excited about what she had learned, especially since she's doing biology this year! What a great compliment to her course work. My son, 7th grade, also said he enjoyed it, although you'd never guess it from his body language. I guess it's not always cool to like school, even (especially?) homeschool.
pics:
While these two were in class,I took my two littles to the other end of the museum for story hour...with animals! They got to pet a bunny. This is especially fun for us because the word bunny is pronounced "bundee" by our 2yo. We love to hear her say it. And she said it a lot on this day. It was super exciting for her.
Meanwhile, my 9yo had found a couple of friends who were also hanging around waiting for siblings to finish class. So she hung out with them while exploring the museum. Afterward the girls included my littles in a game of rock, paper, scissors. Classic.
It was a fun day and we capped it off with a trip to Taco Bell on the way home (fast food is something we almost n.e.v.e.r. do at our house). When we got home there was yet another fun surprise: a secret friend, who shall remain nameless, dropped of some valentine goodies: strawberries and a balloon!
What a great day!
Oh, I almost forgot to tell you about the turtles. A day or two before this field trip we met up at the co-op for a special after-hours presentation on turtles! The presenters were from the NC State veterinarian program who specialize in treating hurt turtles and returning them to the wild. Very cool. Turtles were a new thing for us upon arriving in North Carolina. But they are old news now. We see them all the time. Still, very cool to see one up close and personal and learn more about how they are rehabilitated by skilled students who really do seem to care an AWFUL lot about turtles.
When we lived in WA state, we had the awesome opportunity to take our family to Nature Bridge in the Olympic National Forest; not once, but twice. The first time was in 2012 (that sounds like so long ago!) and then again in 2014.
My parents came to visit this past Christmas '19 and I happen to mention the 2014 vacation to my mom. After our conversation I was inspired to go back and look at some pictures of that trip. I decided to turn it into a mini slide show so I could share it with family and friends. I had fun learning a few new google slide tricks, like adding audio and how to work the timing functions.
So I'm sharing it here as well. :) As you watch, keep in mind that this was only a few months after our baby died and it was still really hard for me to smile. I tried to keep up with the kids and be as normal as I could for them, but my heart was aching. Sometimes it still does.
Note for some reason the slides don't auto advance in this embedded version so you have to click through the slides. If you'd rather watch the auto-advance presentation on your browser hop on over HERE
Ok, I'm going to resist the temptation to back track and fill in all the gaps that are begging to be filled in. In my perfect world I document all of our exciting and even our boring days so that I can pour over them in the future with that silly grin on my face and remember "the good ole days".
But who are we kidding? The perfect world, at least my version of it, doesn't exist yet.
I do comfort myself with the notion that Heaven keeps a perfect record of all things that matter to me personally. I really do. I truly look forward to a day when I can open Heaven's record books and re-watch family videos that don't even exist on earth, or perfectly remember special days that have gone fuzzy in my memory. It will be wonderful. But maybe also terrible? The flip side of that is that Heaven probably also records all of my really bad parenting days, the days I was a terrible wife, and the days I failed to live my religion to its fullest. There must be opposition in all things, right?
I digress..back to poetry, as indicated by the post's title.
I had wanted to buy IEW's poetry memorization course but found that I had already spent too much this year on our homeschool. So I decided to piece together my own poetry memorization program and add it to our morning routine this year. I just started with poetry books we already own and so far this year we've had success with these four poems:
Alphabet Stew
I wanted to start out with something fun and light hearted that would be easy to memorized to kick this thing off with a win! It worked. Even though it's a silly and perhaps childish poem, it has a good message that is applicable to any homeschool. I found it on page 188 of this book
We did many things to help us memorize this poem, but the funnest was probably assigning 1-2 lines to each student and asking that student to illustrate those lines. We then tried to guess which lines were being illustrated and put them in order as we recited the poem.
Here are a few of the illustrations that came about from that activity:
I am not sure why these came out upside down, or how to change that, but there you go. See if you can tell which lines are being illustrated.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost
We had memorized this poem many years before, but the kids did not remember it. My mind was jogged to revisit this poem when it was mentioned by The Comma Queen in a video I used to teach my high school composition course last semester. (More on that another time...maybe)
If you haven't ever watched the Comma Queen on YouTube, I would recommend her! She adds a little humor to what can otherwise be very dull grammar lessons.
The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
I was on a Robert Frost kick, I guess. Our next poem was the classic "forge your own path" poem and we had a great time learning it. My girls have a real knack for memorizing things and they were sometimes annoyed with my constant slip ups! I think what helped us nail this one (or helped ME) was to make hand motions that go along with the lines of the poem. That was super helpful. I also created fill-in-the-blank sheets for this poem. As I read the poem aloud the kids would fill in the missing words. There were a lot of missing words so I would read it as many times as it took for them to fill all the words correctly.
The Difference
I only became aware of this poem because poetry memorization is a part of the 7th grade English curriculum at The Good and the Beautiful. I switched my son over to this program in...late October (I think?) because I felt like he was spinning his wheels with Moving Beyond the Page and needed something more structured. So far, I do feel like it's been a good fit. Anyway, one of the poems was this great poem about prayer that I had never heard before. The author is unknown. Here's a screet shot of it
I got up early one morning and rushed right into the day. I had so much to accomplish that I didn't have time to pray. Problems just tumbled about me, and heavier came each task. "Why doesn't God help me?" I wondered. He answered, You didn't ask," I wanted to see joy and beauty, but the day toiled on, gray and bleak. I wondered why God didn't show me. He said, "But you didn't seek.: I tried to come into God's presence. I used all my keys at the lock. God gently and lovingly chided, "My child, you didn't knock." I woke up early this morning and paused before enter the day. I had so much to accomplish that i had to take time to pray.
Author: UNKNOWN
So what is next for our poetry memorization? Here I am Sunday night trying to get myself back in school mode after coming off a long Christmas break. And I'm trying to figure out our next poems to memorize! I found a terrific resource and have decided that we're going to GO BIG and tackle some Shakespeare. We're going to do Sonnet 116. YIKES. But the resources on that page look great and I will definitely incorporate them into our memorization process.
After that, I will likely go back to consulting this book (below) when looking for a new poem.
Maybe some of this inspires you to memorize a few poems of your own. I think ti's a great way to help kids develop lots of great skills and actually grow that little noggin!
t there you go. See if you can tell which lines are being illustrated.
