14 Years of Homeschooling and Butterflies!!

In July we kicked off my 14th year of homeschooling. It's hard to believe I've been homeschooling that long!

Michaela aspires to graduate early from high school, so she can pursue her nursing degree and get on the mission field. I think she'd go to Africa today, in full-time missions, if we'd let her. Due to her intensity, she completed a health class this summer and is accumulating hours to earn a Congressional Medal in hopes of being awarded a college scholarships. After a busy summer, she has a few weeks to enjoy some R&R before her tough academics begin with classes taken in an on-line classroom called Potter School which includes students literally from around the world. Those classes will begin September 13th.

Michaela and Zoe, our Australian Shepard



AnnaGrace has been in full swing with Math and Language Arts for weeks and is excited to begin her My Father's World Exploring Countries and Cultures curriculum She has a sweet friend, Hannah, who lives in Florida (and shares the international adoption story, having been adopted from Romania) who "meets" with AnnaGrace, via Skype, weekly to discuss what they've learned about the country they've studied each week. I'm thrilled for this extra interaction for her homeschool.

My most exciting homeschool moment was buying NEW kindergarten curriculum. My K-5 curriculum that I used with Torie, Michaela and AnnaGrace was perfectly good; however, I was SO tired of teaching it. I splurged and bought brand new, My Father's World kindergarten curriculum. I'm not sure who is more excited...Sarah Mei or me??

So far she has learned the letters "S" and "M" corresponding with her name "Sarah"..."Mei".

1st day of school in July.



To start the year, in July, we did a unit study on butterflies. In this photo you can see the girls posing with their paper butterfly creation and their butterfly pins on their shirts.



Needless to say we were thrilled, when last week, SarahMei's hematology clinic asked Sarah Mei to represent them at the Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden's kick-off of the Something's A-Flutter exhibit. Of course we readily agreed so Tuesday - Torie, AnnaGrace, SarahMei, Isabelle and I were allowed to release butterflies into the Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden's butterfly enclosure. Only five children were present so our three youngest girls had lots of opportunities to participate. (Michaela missed out on the fun since she had a volleyball game.)

An extra bonus was waking up to the following photo of Sarah Mei on the cover of the Local section of the Charlotte Observer newspaper:

Sarah Mei was trying to coax the Monarch Butterfly onto her finger..



The following photos were on the Charlotte Observer website:

This is an amazing photo of a monarch butterfly emerging from a chrysalis. All of the photos are courtesy of John D. Simmons of the Charlotte Observer.



Here we are looking at Monarch caterpillars. It was fun for the girls to see the egg stage, caterpillar stage, chrysalis and butterflies.



Isn't this photo beautiful!



A butterfly landed on Isabelle's dress just moments before this photo. When the butterfly flew away, Isabelle was trying to catch it!



This was one of our BEST homeschool field trips ever. Special thanks to Blume Hematology clinic and Daniel Stowe Botanical Gardens!