June 4, 2021
Even though weird circumstances led us to homeschooling a little earlier than we were maybe planning to, this year was the biggest blessing. It wasn’t always easy, but all the fun and adventures we had this year are memories that will fill my heart forever.
I realized that I didn’t do a very good job at documenting all the great things we did—I didn’t have nearly as many pictures as I thought..but here are some of the ones I did take! What an awesome year with these two smart babies!
Contemplating a Monet painting—our first artist study. We also studied Picasso and Rivera this year. While doing our weekly art project we would also do our composer study by listening to the music of Mozart, Tchaikovsky, and Chopin 
Our first nature study in our “outdoor classroom”. One of our favorite parts about our curriculum. 
An experiment to see how many stones make the water overflow, after reading The Crow and the Pitcher (Aesop’s fables). 
Little Blue Truck sensory bin 
Our first poetry teatime! 
Reenacting the Lion and the Mouse during our Aesop’s Fables study. 
Finding the little bunny in the crocuses after reading The Runaway Bunny 
Sun art 
Celebrating the first day of fall with some fun fall activities 
Leaf painting 
Making applesauce with the apples we picked! 
Making word soup after reading Stone Soup 
Dressing up like astronauts during our space unit! We also made a space ship but I somehow didn’t take a picture 
Our first hiking group, Wild Explorers Club! 
Completing a mission for Zoola, an alien who we taught all about our planet during our space unit. 
The control panel for their spaceship— how I got a pic of this and not the spaceship I’ll never know 
We made bread to have during poetry teatime after reading Bread and Jam for Francis:) 
Painting alfresco 
Our space unit also integrated other science, health, and math concepts. learned about the skeletal system right around Halloween which was good timing! 
Decorating pumpkins with our homeschool play group we met with a few times in the fall. 
One of our favorite books we read was My Father’s Dragon—after reading each chapter we did a fun activity that went along with what happened in the story. This chapter was about giving the tigers bubblegum to chew to distract them from eating the main character Elmer—the kids got to chew up the gum and stick it on their paper plate tiger’s mouth:) 
In this chapter the rhino had a dirty tusk and Elmer gave him a toothbrush/toothpaste to distract him. We did the egg in coke experiment to see the discoloration and then tried to brush it back to white. 
In this chapter Elmer distracts the lion by giving him a brush and ribbons to groom his tangled mane:) 
Painting Van Gogh’s Starry Night. 
Halloween themed sensory bin. 
We learned about constellations and they made their own model—August chose Draco the Dragon and Scarlett chose Pegasus. 
Halloween themed poetry teatime. 
Some fun Halloween themed experiments! 
We made flying dragons to celebrate Elmer freeing the baby dragon. 
In our nature study we learned about different North American animals using The Burgess Animal Book for Children. During this week we learned about beavers and created a landscape complete with a beaver dam. 
Edible beaver dams they made with pretzel sticks and peanut butter. 
Wild Exploeres Club at Indian Camp Creek 
We celebrated the winter solstice by reading a cute book called Sun Bread about a village baker who makes sun bread to bring the sun back in the cold dark winter. We made our own sun bread to bring the sunshine back too! 
Wild Explorers club at Babler State Park. 
Magic House trip—one of the best things about homeschooling is getting to take field trips whenever we want! 
Birthday party for Eeyore during our Winnie the Pooh unit. 
Field trip to the zoo to see the big cats after learning about some of the big cats of North America. 
In our nature study we learned about identifying animals by their tracks/scat so we made animal scat cookies 
Experiment to see how meteors and other space rocks create craters when hitting the surface of a planet or moon. 
Visit to Lone Elk park after learning about elk. 
A new nature group! Wild + Free Explorers at Castlewood Park 
After finishing our animal study, we moved onto plants using the book Seed Babies. 
Doing a little woodworking 
We did a mini unit study about rainbows and we happened to have a koala crate activity box with rainbow activities, hence the rainbow pillows. 
We did a unit study about nests and Scarlett collected materials, planned, and constructed her own nest. 
We did another unit study on butterflies so they both made a “chrysalis” around themselves and emerged out as butterflies! 
Field trip to the Butterfly House 
Setting our butterflies free! 
Field trip to Myseum 
August learned how to write his name this year and knows how to write a lot of other letters too! 
Our last math unit—telling time! 
Last day! I thought it was fitting to end where we started by doing our last nature study lesson in our outdoor classroom. 
We celebrated with water balloons! 
School’s out for the summa!