End of the School Year Awards

Our school's name is Sts. Philip Neri and John Vianney Academy as these are 2 of my favorite saints. Oddly we take our summer vacation between their Feast Days!

At the end of the school year we had a lovely awards breakfast with some homeschooling friends and our priests. The mothers each gave some kind of award for some accomplishment for each of their children. Here are our awards:

Sam -
The St. Joseph Cupertino Most Improved Dyslexic Reader Award
and
The St. Tarcisius Altar Boy Award for Learning the Parts of the Traditional Latin Mass & Graduating from Torch Bearer to Altar Boy

Galadriel -
St. Luke Art Award for her beautiful colored drawings of God’s Lovely Birds

Eowyn -
St. Barbara Award for Most Improved Mathematician

Frodo -
St. Dominic Savio Little Altar Boy Award for Learning all the Parts of the Traditional Latin Mass & Serving at the age of 7

Rosie -
St. Thomas Aquinas Reading Award for Learning to Read
and
Blessed Imelda Award for Preparing her Mind, Heart and Soul for her First Holy Communion

Eleanor -
Blessed Fra Angelico Art Award for Her Coloring & Drawing

Merry -
St. Isidore Wee Gardener Award for Helping Prepare the Garden

Pippin -
St. Jude Award for Most Improved Mass Etiquette

Bilbo -
St. Apollonia Award for His First Tooth

School's Out!

Galadriel, my leftie, was taking her last tests when what should arrive in the mail but a *huge* Rainbow Resource catalog the size of a big ol' telephone book (if you remember what a telephone book is). The problem with homeschooling today is there is *so* much to choose from, especially ever so many extras! But for now I am glad to be able to get a bit of "vacation" (if a mother of 9 can be said to actually get a vacation). However, I will spend said "vacation" preparing my lesson plans for 2008/2009. I really enjoy the planning and preparing! We will start back up at the beginning of August.... hopefully!

Our Unusual Nests

Birds can build their nests in some rather unusual places.........


This Robin built her nest unusually low. This is Rosie peeping in.

The Mother Robin ended up with 4 eggs in her nest.


Newly hatched


3 hatched, 1 to go.......


Hungry little robins.


Sam was spying on the robin's nest when he said suddenly they just started to take off. He followed this one. It doesn't take long for their wings to be in working order.

Unusually unusual.......

This Mother Robin built her incredible nest in the motor of one of our tractors.



4 more eggs




More hatchlings


Since the tractor was a bit away from the house we forgot to check until the nest was abandoned.

Fly Catcher nest

The fly catchers built their nest on the chimney for the boiler.


5 eggs this time.


Chipping Sparrow

There was some debate if this was a song sparrow or a chipping sparrow. This is the mother.


She build her wee teensy adorable little nest inside one of our hanging plants


She also laid 4 eggs but only 3 hatched.


They were so cute!


They took off and were so friendly. This is Frodo *of course* holding the wee birdie.


The bird just stood there as peaceful as ever, of course we peeped in at them from the time they were eggs so perhaps they were used to us?


The boys following the little birds.

Now if only we could find a humming bird nest! I'd just love to see one!

To go along with the study of birds I'd recommend Notebooking.com's nature and bird disk.
Also here is a link to an audio of bird sounds.
And here is a link to bird images.

Home-Education Fair

Tertullian, in his 2nd century defense of Christians remarks how Christian love attracted pagan notice: "What marks us in the eyes of our enemies is our loving kindness. 'Only look,' they say, 'look how they love one another'" (Apology 39).

This struck me as an appropriate quote for this wonderful homeschooling day we hosted.


Everyone arrived about 10am (nice and clean and tidy....) Here is Pippin and his twin-friend checking out our dog who seems to have claimed our picnic table.

After talking for nearly an hour we started the recital.

There were about 30 children present and 6 or 7 mothers.

Some played the piano


Some gave an oral presentation.






Some played a duet

This boy played the trumpet! I would love for one of mine to learn the trumpet, I love brass ensembles!

One played the violin

And another played an oboe.

Now what sets homeschoolers apart when it comes time for a recital? The show will stop for a short "class" on some unusual bit or piece, in this case it started with the oboe.... and no one thinks its out of the ordinary.

The oboe and trumpet duet with an adorable on-looker.




These 2 young ladies did the famous Abbott and Costello "Who's on First" routine and I must say they did an excellent job! Very entertaining!

Many children brought their school projects to show.


This is Sam's windmill, that is a working windmill. He built it to light up a lightbulb.



This was a WWII diaramma, the owner gave a great presentation on it as well.



The "castle" is Merry's, made out of stacking pegs. If you need an item to keep a toddler busy get stacking pegs!





Sam fixed up our learning altar a bit though we still need frames for the Altar Cards. He added in the burse and the altar cloth that goes over the chalice.


Chatty ladies!

Pippin *loves* "choklit"

After lunch the older children helped do a mini-olympics. I was so impressed how they were able to pull it altogether.




Wee Tree-leggered Racers

Pippin falling apart at the end of the day.

Tug of War

Good ol' Fashioned Red Rover

I liked this one with our "red rover" wandering through the game!

Bilbo

A good friend brought these beautiful flowers along when she was unable to find *roses*.

The last guests left about 4:00... all with children very dirty!