Weekly Wrap-Up: In Which I Attempt to Summarize the Entire Year

This is my first time participating in the Weekly Wrap-Up hosted by Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers, and as I haven't shared anything here about our 2009-2010 school year, I guess my goal for today will be to summarize the past year in just a few paragraphs and pictures.

My students this past year were Kennady (Grade 3), Landon (Grade 5), Spencer (Grade 9) and Harrison (Grade 12). Kennady and Landon still let me take a semi-official 'First Day of School' photo - the older boys, not so much.

[caption id="attachment_720814" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="Kennady - First Day of School 2009-2010"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_720816" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="Landon - First Day of School 2009-2010"][/caption]

As usual, we drew from several different publishers for our curricula - Modern Curriculum Press and Saxon for Math and Algebra; Alpha Omega Lifepacs and BJU Press for English; God's Design series for Science; Notgrass and all kinds of other things for History.  Something new for us this year was Switched-On-Schoolhouse.  We tried it for Spanish, for Grade 9 English, and for High School Consumer Math.  For Spanish and Consumer Math it was fantastic.  For English... well, we're going back to the Lifepacs for the coming year.  For the most part our year went smoothly, and we didn't fall behind my schedule any more than is customary.  Which is to say that we were each lagging behind in at least one or two subjects by spring break.  ;-)  Fortunately, everyone got most of their work done by the time I did final report cards, so there's not much we'll be wrapping up over the summer.  There was extra incentive for Harrison to finish in a timely manner, because the final grade was truly FINAL this year.

We did a few field trips this year - we kicked things off by visiting the Baseball Hall of Fame at the end of our vacation, then did a unit study on the history of baseball to get our school year started.   We visited the Carroll County Times to learn about how the newspapers are written, edited, printed and distributed.  We made our second trip to an aviation museum in Baltimore.  Co-op class was a highlight of the spring season, as usual.  And in May we went to Washington DC and visited some of the monuments, toured the Federal Bureau of Engraving, and stopped in at the Museum of American History.  Most recently we also visited the National Zoo.

[caption id="attachment_720824" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="newspaper press"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_720825" align="aligncenter" width="190" caption="aviation museum"][/caption]

And soon it will be time to start on another school year!  AFTER some summer fun...  :-)