tutor gifts

It's that time of year again!  This Thursday is our last day of Classical Conversations for the year.  I can't believe how fast this year has gone by!  As I have every other year, I made gifts for each of my children's tutors and the nursery workers.  I used this tutorial for the coin purses.  These little bags are totally addicting to make, so be warned.  They were not what I had planned to make for the tutors, but when I found myself making more and more of them it just made sense to give these instead of starting a totally new project.

I put some Burt's Bee's chap stick in the bags and filled the baskets with Easter grass and candy.

 I ended up giving all but one of the bags I made away so I am totally going to have to make more!  If you think you want to make some of these bags I recommend looking for the clasps on Ebay.  I ended up getting 25 clasps for less than the cost of two at Michael's... and trust me, you are not gonna want to stop making them at two!

And just for fun, here are some of the tutor gifts I have made in the past.

last day of CC

I just realized I never published this post!  Oops!  Anyway, I am back dating it and posting now!
 
Yesterday was our last day of CC!  The past two weeks have been spent in a flurry of end of year activity including Memory Master proofing, End of Year Celebration planning, Tutor gift sewing, and other misc. things.  Over the past 6 weeks the kids have been making bridges from straws, rubber bands and clay, and egg boxes for an egg drop out of popsicle sticks, rubber bands, and napkins.  Thursday they got to test out their creations.

These were hard projects for my class of 8/9 year olds as the adults were not supposed to help.  They still had fun doing it though.  I don't have any pictures of Regan and her friend Emily's egg box, but apparently theirs won the campus wide contest!

Here's my class with their bridges...

For the end of year celebration our class sang the president song and (most of) the kids dressed up like one of the presidents.

I had such a great time tutoring these guys this year, they were a super fun bunch of kids :)

thank yous

Its that time of year again.  I've spent the last week sewing lots of end of year thank you gifts! 

This is just 11 of the 13 bags I sewed.  I used this pattern.  I am sure I will make more of these, they were pretty simple to make and turned out really cute.  

spring break part 2

Our second week (oh how I love the freedom of homeschooling) of spring break was jam packed with as much fun as we could fit in (we needed it after 3 plus weeks of the stomach bug!) We even got some summer-like weather. Wednesday it was hot enough to put on swim suits and play in the sprinkler. Some of our very best friends came over for the afternoon and as I sat on the porch watching I was almost tempted to put on my swimsuit and play too :)

I was surprised that Addie played in the hose with the big kids.  She can be kinda funny about that sorta thing, but not this time...

she's even asked to play in the hose again since then.

Have I talked about how much Regan LOVES gymnastics?  I think she spends more time walking on her hands than on her feet!

We Also had our CC year end celebration.  Each class presented some of the memory work from cycle one and the 21 Memory Masters (Our largest group of Memory Masters yet and Regan was one of them. Yay, Regan!) were presented with certificates and T-shirts.

This week it is back to the grind, but a much slower grind with CC done for the year.

almost there

Regan passed her tutor proof for Memory Master today!  For those of you who are unfamiliar with CC, a Memory Master is a student who has mastered all the information we have learned over the course of the cycle (24 weeks) and can repeat, from memory, those facts.  This is a list of what those facts included this cycle:

-161 events and people in a chronological timeline
-44 U.S. presidents
-24 history sentences to add depth to our timeline
-120 locations and geographic features in Africa, Eurpe, and the Old World
-24 science facts (including clasifications of living things and each continent's highest mountain
-5 Latin noun endings and their singular and plural declentions
-English grammar facts (including 53 prepositions, 23 helping verbs, and 12 linking verbs)
-Multiplication tables up to 15x15, common squares and cubes, as well as basic geometry formulas    and unit conversions

There are 4 levels to proofing, two at home with family members, one with their tutor (this one is the hardest and most important) and a spot check with the director.  Regan has made it through the first 3 and just has her director proof left.  She has worked so hard for this and we are so proud of her!

After her Tutor proof this morning we met up with the hubby for a celebratory lunch at Chick-fil-A.

Congratulations Regan!

(I wrote about Micah's Memory Master Experience here last year)

molly pitcher

Regan wrote her final paper for Essentials on Molly Pitcher, a Revolutionary War heroine.  She will read her paper in front of the class tomorrow and is supposed to dress in character.  This was a pretty easy costume to throw together.  We lucked out and found the perfect dress in the first 2 minutes of being in the thrift store and for only $2!  This morning I whipped up the apron from an old duvet cover.  Nothing fancy, just a couple of rectangles and straps that tie around the back and neck.

A part of the Molly Pitcher story involves a British musket ball flying between her legs and tearing her dress, so as hard as it was, I took the scissors to the dress and apron and then let Regan go play in the back yard wearing the costume.  Neither one of us wanted to cut the dress and apron, but for the sake of the presentation, we did it.  Besides, the costume only cost me $2 and less than an hours work... 

I just may have to make another dress and apron for the dress up bin that we keep looking nice :)

happy endings

This is our last week of Classical Conversations.  I can't believe how quickly the year has flown by.  Today Micah completed the tutor round of his Memory Master Proof.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with CC, a Memory Master is a student who has mastered all the information we have learned over the course of the cycle (24 weeks) and can repeat, from memory, those facts.  This is a list of what those facts included this cycle:
  
-The entire timeline of 160 events from creation to modern times; 
-Twenty-four history sentences about U.S. history; 
-Twenty-four science questions and answers covering human anatomy, chemistry, and origins; 
-Multiplication tables through the fifteens plus squares and cubes, conversions, and math laws; 
-All fifty states and their capitals plus seventy physical features on the U.S. map; 
-Twenty-four definitions or lists from English grammar; 
-Latin vocabulary lists and John 1:1–7 in Latin; and 
-The forty-four U.S. presidents.

Today's test was the hardest part and he passed!   Micah, we are so proud of you!!!

This weekend I had the pleasure of getting to put together this basket of goodies for the mom who coordinates our afternoon program for all the children not yet in Essentials.

And I finished up these bags for all my kids tutors and the nursery workers.  If you want to make one yourself, check out Randi's tutorial.  It's not exactly the same, but pretty close. 

I made 10 different bags and they all turned out so cute- I wanted to keep them all for myself!!!  They come together quickly too and make a great afternoon "I need to sew something" project :)