Last Day of Co-Op

 Our co-op ended at the end of April, and the last day was a special one. Erica and I survived our first year teaching and even were crazy enough to agree to teach two classes next year. 

For our last book club class, we planned an escape room. It felt intimidating at first, but once we started brainstorming and planning, we executed a pretty great escape room. 

The five letter code ended up being the most difficult- not what we expected. They needed a pair of fresh eyes to unscramble the letters to spell MOUSE

This was such a wonderful group of kids. Erica and I talked often how our class was a Unicorn class, 6 boys and 6 girls, everyone read all the books, all the kids participated so well and each brought such a unique perspective to the class. We'd love to repeat the same thing again. Love those kids!

In Katherine's elementary elections and government class, the students presented on famous Presidents or landmarks on the last day of class. Katherine researched all about Abraham Lincoln and did a great job on her presentation. She's grown up so much this past year. 

For Elisabeth's last astronomy class, she made this awesome painting. It turned out so good!

Sweet friends. We're looking forward to summer break, but it's hard to say goodbye to seeing so many friends as regularly.

We celebrated another awesome year of homeschooling. I'll never take for granted getting to spend my days teaching and learning alongside these four kids. 

We're ready for summer and the beach!

Springtime Fun

 We filled our Spring with as much fun as we could cram in.

We hosted our April Keepers of the Faith meeting and taught the girls how to play croquet. It was a great afternoon. After a round of croquet, we came back to our house for snacks and the couch game. Such a great afternoon!

Katherine set up a library in our living room, and we all checked out books from it for a few days. Love her coffee cup :)

One morning the kids asked to go to the mall to walk around Scheels. Katherine insisted on a picture with this dog statue. 

Elisabeth spends most Wednesdays serving at Arms Around BA. She does many things- marks of bar codes, organizes groceries and other donations, help people with food orders, but her all time favorite thing to do is babysit while the parents are shopping. Her heart and desire to serve others is such a joy to watch. Praying her desire to serve grows as she does. 

For our last book club book of the year, we read Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library. We divided the kids into groups and asked them to design their own board game based on one or more of the books we read throughout the year. The kids understood the assignment and worked very hard on their board games. It was fun to hear them present their ideas. 

It's a rare moment that Matt is nap trapped these days. I don't think he minds it. 

Friends spending the mornign with us and pretty weather of course means a game of wiffle ball in the backyard. 

Afternoons in Kidsboro lead to all sorts of creativity. Look at this flower braid. 

We rented out a small baseball field for an afternoon of wiffle ball for the middle schoolers in our homeschool group. Nathan had been asking all year for this event. He was very excited. 

We attended our annual homeschool group's elementary Easter egg hunt at the Gundersons. Their property is just wonderful for egg hunting. The girls had a blast.

We've had an unusually rainy Spring, and this adorable puppy has been enjoying the mud. We've had to bathe her more than normal. Good things she's cute. 

This girl has been on a reading kick especially with a new kindle to read her books on. 

Nathan completed his Algebra 2 curriculum at the end of April. Proud of him and his perseverance getting through such a tough math year. He works really hard at everything he does.  

The kids had "nerd" night at AWANA and were excited to plan their costumes.

Samuel's creativity and ability to execute his ideas always amazes me. He won the night with his "nerd" costume. 

These cuties sure love a theme night. 

Elisabeth struggled to finish her writing assignment at the end of the year. I really didn't want her to have any last assignments hanging over her to have to finish after our beach trip. Thankfully she buckled down and finished on time. Yay!!