Watercolor Painting with Let's Make Art

With more margin for arts and crafts, the girls usually watercolor every other day of summer vacation.

They often like to follow along with Let's Make Art's You Tube tutorials. 

With the right supplies on hand, assorted paints, watercolor paper, brushes, etc., they can do any project. 

 

Diomede's Shield

Adele's reading The Iliad, the graphic novel, in her free time right now. It's also summer, so there's a greater amount of leisure time for crafts, so she made Diomede's shield from a frozen pizza package, markers, and some Scotch tape. 

Puzzle Time

 

I think I got the idea from a homeschool podcast. 

On holidays, we put out a new puzzle on the dining room table. 

It's fun, relaxing, promotes leisure. 

It brings everyone together. 

Now it's tradition in our home.  

We'll buy a puzzle and wait. 

Then as soon as our Classical Conversations semester or year is finished, we put out a puzzle the very next day. 

This May when our CC year ended for the summer break, we put together the puzzle shown above. 

And we'll often pair a puzzle with a new audio book, enjoying a few hours of listening and working everyday until it was finished. 

Mother's Day 2022

On Mother's Day, after church and Bible study, Dwayne took me brunch without our kids. As we left them home to make their own lunch, our oldest made a remark such as, "So basically, on Mother's Day, you want to a break from mothering." She was speaking in jest, and we all had a laugh, because yes, that was the truth of it. At brunch, I had my first Bellini made from Prosecco and peach nectar. Wow! Actually, I probably had my first three Bellinis, since the waitress continued to fill my glass as I sipped. It was a lovely drink, a lovely brunch. Later, I had a long nap and awoke to work on my jigsaw puzzle while listening to an audio book. Altogether, it was a lovely, delicious, restful Mother's Day 2022. 

Challenge 4 Senior Thesis Defense

I directed Challenge 4 this year, and one of the last events of this year was the Senior Thesis Presentation and Defense. 

My three students, including my oldest daughter, wrote twenty page thesis papers on topics of their choosing including: 

Christian Education and the Public Schools

Masks Mandates Were a Mistake

Modern Dating is Ineffective  

Then they had to share their papers with a panel of judges two weeks ahead of time and then stand and present an abstract of their paper to an audience and answers challenges from a panel of judges for thirty minutes. 

They all did a great job! 

It was a rewarding culmination of several years of the rhetoric, logic, debate, composition, research, and public speaking they have done through the Classical Conversations Challenge programs. 

Memory Master T-Shirt

 Adele was given a Memory Master t-shirt as an award for completing Memory Masters this year. She wore it right away. 

Field Day/ Awards Day 2022

 

Our Classical Conversations group had their year-end Field Day and Awards Ceremony. 

First, we had Chickfila for lunch. 

Then each class got their certificates of completion. 

Pictures above show my youngest with her Foundations and Essentials classes, and also receiving her Memory Masters certificate.  

Later, I ran the group through field day activities including tug of war and three legged race and parachute games. 

Finally, the ice cream truck came to finish the day! 

It was a great time to celebrate another CC year well done.