School's Out for Summer (Recap 2024-2025)

 For the first time in several homeschool years, we actually began in August and ended in May. 

And we won't have to add any days later even though we still took plenty of mini-vacations and took off days when we needed to and did our own thing a lot.

We may actually be getting this thing down now. Ha ha.

This was our first year using this particular curriculum for History. She got to enjoy doing several a projects this year. Here are a few.

We had to start out with making a castle. Which also entailed learning how to use a hot glue gun.

Then sponge painting the rock facade...

And finally putting it all together. 

She's still pretty proud of it.

We also talked about the War of the Roses so a little papercraft was necessary.

We got to touch on the classic Robin Hood tale too. So she made a hat. I guess I could call this a "first sewing lesson." :)

King Henry VIII is always a fun one.

I thought this Roanoke diorama turned out pretty well. She even had the gate hanging askew.

Her end-of-year project was a timeline that had her favorite events discussed this year. It ended up being front and back -- not quite the way I had envisioned it but she made it her own.

She also gave "painting the Sistine Chapel" a try when we discussed that. I believe the word she used to describe it was 'weird' but she was a good sport.

Our Biology was another newbie for us. So we did a few experiments but I didn't get pictures of all of them.

Here we did the classic flower experiment. We've done it once before when she was younger but it was just as fun this time.

This is a model of a virus she built.

One of the first few experiments we did involved the chemical processes used to make ice cream.

She wasn't too sure about tasting it...

but she overcame her fear.

She even said it was good and finished it off.

We also learned about acidity and tried out some litmus paper.

Edible experiments must have been our thing this year. DNA models are always better when you can eat them later.

And no Science year is complete without checking something out under the microscope. In fact, I ended up buying two sets of prepared slides this year for Biology. We might end up with quite the collection.

She also got to try a few new art projects...

I thought this pastel picture turned out pretty.

And she got to learn a little weaving this year too.

I don't worry too much about Art any more. We have so many opportunities to go along with other subjects for such things that they are usually tied together. I think the weaving may have been attached to a history lesson, for example. And she's technically already gone through a couple of art history type curricula so we may just stick with that for these last couple of years. Doing something artsy though definitely helps her to retain whatever we've learned about.

So that's our school year recap. I had forgotten just how much we did this year. And now I'm looking forward to next year.

BUT first I want my summer. :)