Homeschool Hike

 Someday when this wonderful homeschool journey ends, I will greatly miss our random Tuesday morning hikes.

Show Me A Sign

We had our last book party of the year- Show Me A Sign. Audra had already read it and loved it. It was not my favorite book because the antagonist was so mean! Why do people have to be so mean?!?!?!

But, the book party was fun!

Of course, we had tons of food.

And the kids all made Memory Maps.

And, the homeschooling rite of passage: Dissecting owl pellets!

 

Hike!

Last week was miserably cold, like it didn't get over 5 degrees for three days. We barely went outside, but we did go to the rec center to run around and we tried. Bur it really was awful.

This week has been GLORIOUS!

So, when my Weather Boyfriend (don't worry-Ben knows ALL about him) said we should all get out and enjoy the sun before the next snowstorm comes in, I knew he was right.

I told the girls we were going, and they didn't complain. So we almost didn't go because I feared they were having medical complications. Not to worry, though, the whining immediately started once we hit the trail so I knew they were just fine.

Nature is healing to the soul! In fact, I know how to stop WW3- Putin needs to go on a hike. Except it's too dang cold in Russia, no wonder he is Mr. Grumpy Pants.

He needs to move to Arizona. Not only will they welcome him with open arms and give him all the adulation he desperately craves, he will finally get some sun to melt his icy heart.

Our first hike of the year- Roxborough Park! It was sad to not have Audra there. Which got me thinking, there is one good thing that might come out of our terrible new school board. If they decide to arm teachers, which they have said they want to do, I will immediately pull Audra from ThunderRidge and homeschool her again (there's not a change in Hades I am sending her to school where teachers are armed) and it would be wonderful to have her join us for these almost perfect days! So now I almost hope they do pass it- it forces the decision for us ;)

Cloverleaf!

 Claire and Camille got to do some really cool presentations. Camille was in two plays- and she made the playbill for The Emperor's New Hair all by herself. She was the salesperson in The Emperor's New Hair and a jury member for "The Jury of Alexander T. Wolf." I was very proud of her for putting aside her fears of public speaking- she did an excellent job.

Do you see her tucked back in there? She is wearing her mask as she didn't have any speaking parts in this one:

And then Claire presented her artwork and her science project. Her project was seeing if people could tell the difference between homemade cake vs. a box cake. She got to bake a lot of cake as a result.

Colorado History Museum

 Three parenting wins. Or fails- you pick.

1. Teacher: "Class, pull out your phones and look at how much screen time you use each day." Students: "6 hours." "7 hours." "5 hours"

Audra: "4 minutes." Teacher: "Wait, Audra, what?"

2. Teacher: "Today we are going to learn the phrase 'Keeping up with the Jones'". Teacher explains term. Audra thinks to herself, "oh, my family definitely doesn't do that."

3. Audra has day off school. Three days before she says, "Mom, can we please go to a museum on my day off?"

So we did.

(Notes: My parents own a 1927 Model T Ford. We insist that is more fun to ride in than the museum model.

We got to "see" Anjali, our friend who is Time's first ever kid of the year and on display at the museum. When people say there's no hope for our future, I look at her and then look at my kids and their friends and I say they are wrong)

They had a section honoring the rodeo that the girls enjoyed playing in.

Yay! There's Antjali!

We got to put our quotes on a huge wall, too.

Mom: "I care about equality and I want to live in a world where empathy replaces profits, love overcomes apathy, and building bridges is more desire than building walls."

Camille: "I care about climate change and I want to live in a world where we aren't destroying our planet."

I didn't know Colorado was involved with the Civil War, but we were. Thankfully, on the Union side. This is the flag that they carried as went and defeated the encroaching Confederates.

The ski jump- the closest they have ever been to skiing!

Ben came with us and we had a great time. I think Audra was happy to do something homeschool normal for once.

A Map

 Camille made this map at Cloverleaf and was so proud of it! She loved naming cities after her sisters and friends.

The Lion of Mars Book Party

 This is the first year that we have done "Book Parties" and we have enjoyed them so much! This month we hosted and partied over "The Lion of Mars." We had so much fun.

The kids painted rocks,

Played tic tac toe,

Designed their ideal settlement (they spent over an hour on this!),

played pictionary,

And ate lots of food but apparently I didn't take any pictures of that.

It was a great day! We are grateful for our Book Party Family!