What Have We Learned This Year?

I generally count our year-round school year as August-July, but since this week marked the end of our local public school's school year (and today we're going to the open house for the kids' sleep-away camp next month, and tomorrow the younger kid starts her Summer Intensive ballet program!!!), it made me curious to review what we've learned so far this year. Here are just a few of our larger themes:

(Note: I put in a few links and photos, but you'd want to search my blog for the full curriculum plans that I used and all of our other activities and resources)

Art

color theory

drawing

Durer

fashion design (for the younger kid)

flower arranging

limestone carving (for the older kid)

pottery

Foreign Languages

Latin

Mandarin Chinese

Spanish

History

Ancient China

Civil Rights

Civil War

Western Expansion and the pioneers

Math

area

decimals (just the older kid)

fractions

long division (just the older kid)

multi-digit multiplication (both kids!)

subtraction with borrowing (for the younger kid)

PE

aerial silks

ballet (for the younger kid)

horseback riding

ice skating

Practical Life

Girl Scout cookie sales

cooking

woodworking

Reading and Writing

fiction writing

infographics

NaNoWriMo

research papers

Science

aquatic ecosystems

botany

how to identify, clean, and prepare dinosaur fossils

Robotics (for the older kid)

Although the kids are in and out of all kinds of interests, all the time (lately, for instance, they are OBSESSED with density, and we've been doing tons of density experiments/demonstrations together), these listed are the main ones, the ones that have seemed to find their way into our studies all year. The older kid used area calculations to figure out the layout of her butterfly garden last week. The younger kid made me a lovely arrangement of peonies for the table yesterday. As part of her school this month, the older kid is reading a college paleontology textbook, which she can understand because she's studied so much paleontology.

Our days are sometimes hard, and they sometimes feel too long, and they sometimes seem too short, and sometimes nobody wants to do their math or their grammar or their chores--including me! But looking back through the year, seeing that a kid who couldn't subtract with borrowing in August can now calculate multi-digit multiplication problems, that a kid who was so nervous that she forgot her silks routine in December just walked a fashion show runway in front of a full auditorium in April... well, that's encouraging. It's inspiring.

Frankly, it's a large part of why we homeschool.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!