School's out for summer!

Chloe proudly showing off portfolio evaluation.

[WARNING: This post includes excessive use of exclamation points.]

Chloe is officially DONE with kindergarten!

Yahoo and Hallelujah! 

I'm unspeakably proud of all that Chloe's accomplished this year.  She's a fabulous little reader and a true joy to teach. 

We've had many mountain and valley moments through our year of kindergarten.  I pray the valleys will help teach Chloe the value of perseverance and keep her humbly relying on God for strength in her educational journey.

In Ohio, there are at least three different ways you can provide documentation of your homeschooling year.  I chose to compile a portfolio of Chloe's year of schoolwork and then to have the portfolio evaluated by a certified teacher. (Ironically, both Matt and I are teachers but neither of us are certified to teach K-12 here.  I suppose we might be a trifle biased in evaluating our own daughter anyhow.)

I purposely didn't take a photo of the ginormous binder we put together chronicling Chloe's kindergarten year.  It's embarrassingly huge.  I had no clue what to omit.  Nearly everything that was worthy of saving throughout the year made it into the portfolio binder.  Besides dividing out her work by discipline, I also had sections for handwriting, book reports, field trips, enrichment, homeschool co-op group, and unit studies. 

Thankfully, she passed the evaluation with flying colors! 

And now we celebrate, eat chocolate cake and take a much-deserved break from schoolwork!

Though not entirely.  Our family life is so completely infused with books that reading will naturally continue throughout the summer months.  I have a list of chapter books I'd like to read aloud to Chloe and both kids have already completed their first week's chart for our library's summer reading program.

And of course summer is the perfect time to do a few fun outdoor science studies.  I hope to do a unit on stars with the kids and explore the warm summer sky with our telescope for constellations and other celestial objects.

Don't worry, we're not such eggheads that we'll read the summer away.  Bike riding, swimming, visits from family, park playdates and general summer fun-nity is also on the agenda!

Big congratulations to our new little first grader! 

Enjoying the celebratory dessert of chocolate almond cake and ice cream.

 

Clive is happy to partake in the spoils of big sister's hard work! 

Horn homeschool: Weeks 34-36

For our final unit study of the year, we've been learning all about flowers. 

As usual, we began with a boat-load of books about flowers from the library.  We talked about the vast variety of flowers including flower bushes and grasses.  Did you know that grasses flower?  I sure didn't!  We also learned about the basic anatomy of a flower and the processes of pollination and fertilization.

We dissected a tulip flower head and I showed the kids the various anatomical parts of the flower.  Then Chloe drew her own flower diagram of a tulip on a posterboard.

We planted lots of different flower seeds in pots for our yard and noted the great contrasts between them as we planted. We did sunflowers, marigolds, snapdragons, calla lilies and sweet peas.  I love it when we can combine a learning activity with a household task!  Got my flowers planted and did a little homeschooling at the same time.  Nice. 

Another fun aspect of our flower study has been our "What's in Bloom?" poster.  Chloe and I are charting the perennial flowers that we see blooming around our area.  On the chart we note the date the flower blooms, I write down the flower name and then Chloe colors a swatch of color to match the blooming flower.  Then we both draw the flower in the last column.  At the end of the summer (assuming we keep it going) I look forward to seeing if there's anything we can conclude from our flower chart.  One of the flower books we read said that in general, flower color can tell you what part of the year it blooms in.  For example, pinks and purples are mostly mid-summer flowers while whites and yellows are spring bloomers.   We'll see if our findings prove or disprove that color-season pattern. 

I'm certain we could have done more crafts and such for this unit.  The possibilities with flowers are practically limitless!  But the end or our school year is in sight and we're ramping down considerably.  Only 10 pages left in Chloe's math book and then she's all done with her formal kindergarten studies.  Hooray!