The rest of 2023

 Wow, when I don't have Westwind on my back, I don't do this blog!

BUT I will be with Westwind this 2024-2025 school year, so I need to finish last years blog and get in gear to keep up my learning outcomes.

Okay, so last blog I went over what we did with science in 2023, but I didn't talk about much else, so let's go over the other stuff, i.e. the history and uhhh other stuff. WOW this blog is starting off GREAT!

So, first let's finish what happened the summer of 2023. 

Daniel was pretty productive in that party department. He tried to do pointillism with skittles for a birthday present, and we realized that pointillism doesn't work with such big "pixels." 

Also, he got paid to throw a party where he made a piñata and helped the kids make slime.

But I don't think he helped with William's birthday, but that did happen

Hyrum learned about chemical burns when his cousins bleached his hair, and he also learned about ummm game theory while playing a million and one bored games that summer.

We also did cross country track that summer. There is this awesome guy that is doing this for us out of the goodness of his heart for free. I feel very grateful to him since everyone loves it. I was walking everyday anyway back then, so I often helped out.

And we continued to do cross country into the fall:

And Hyrum even did a little bit of math during the summer. I want him to get ready to take the ALEKS math placement test, but to be honest, I dropped the ball and haven't done this for a really long time. However, while doing this math we had an incredible experience:

Age 4: can't count to 4

Age 5: drilling how to count to 10 Every. Single. Day.

Age 16: "Mom, remember how you would draw numbers on your fingers and try and get me to count to ten and it was so hard? Now I'm factoring polynomials using the quadratic formula and I totally get it."

ME: Crying for joy inside. Didn't even realize he remembered all the effort we've done.

Hyrum saying this was so validating! We've had a long journey, and he's doing amazing things!

WE ARE DONE WITH SUMMER 2023

Okay, moving on. In order to get ready for the school year, I met with the awesome homeschool moms of Cardston. These women are why I live here!

And, even though I was still not a Canadian resident, I was invited to the Westwind Homeschool Orientation where I talked about.....this blog.....and how I record my learning outcomes....uhhhh.....ooops. Look, when I'm being asked to by Westwind I actually keep up this blog, so that's got to count for something.

They started doing things with other homeschoolers, including going to Bill Peavoy's amazing leadership workshops:

And to birthday parties

And we started doing the usual reading, writing, and arithmetic. Abraham started on his last year of "normal" Rightstart math: Level E.

And William finished his All About Spelling Level 3. I decided that we would focus on Level 4 All About Reading before moving forward with anymore spelling.

At the beginning of the year we had a few visits. One was from people we met while traveling the world (the Lances.) We got to show them our little corner of the world, so that was fun!

We also got a visit from our old homeschool friends: the Barries. They have been such an important part of our homeschool journey that it kind of kills a part of me that they don't live here anymore. So we put a sign up welcoming them home for their visit.

And we had a mom's night as well as "Hobbit" parties to celebrate them being with us.

(Side note, Naomi was doing incredible parties at this time, and each one had a theme. Here's one that was a "black and Red" party:)

One AMAZING thing that happened while the Barries were here, was MAXWELL GOT HIS MISSION CALL!!!

He had started his papers in FEBRUARY but because his records were in Vanuatu, it took this long for his call to actually come. We felt a little hard done by because of this. SEVEN months seemed a long time to wait, but it turned out to be a blessing. Ezra had sent his papers in ONE WEEK prior, and then both Ezra and Maxwell got their mission calls on the SAME DAY!

This is especially cool since they were baptized on the same day. To share this experience with Ezra was what Maxwell needed. It was awesome.

We had so many people there to support them as they opened their calls. Ezra was called to St. George Utah, and Maxwell was called to South Carolina (first he was called to Columbia, but his mission got split and now he's in Charleston.)

That semester, Maxwell and Ezra were getting ready for their missions, which included getting endowments. That is the beginning of adulthood in my mind. What a huge step, and it was incredible that they were able to do it together.

They also got ready by working at Super Binz, Dustin's new STORE! Yes, Dustin and Gregory opened a retail store in Calgary which sells Amazon returns. It's been quite the adventure.

Ezra was scheduled to leave first, in November. Maxwell made this pen case for him using a CNC machine. 

Our last outing we had with Ezra was at the Cardston Festival of Lights. and then we had his farewell. It's weird to have our homeschool kids leave the nest! 

But I'm getting ahead of myself talking about Christmas. We haven't even gone over Halloween. By the way, that Halloween, William made quite a bit of money by creating Hot Cocoa mugs that he would sell door to door. A little entrepreneur in the making!

Also, Abraham made his own costume, which had something to do with Minecraft (I think,) and Daniel also made his own costume. He was a "cereal killer." Hahaha I love that kid.

On Memorial Day, we went to the Memorial Day program the city always puts on.

Maxwell made this amazing "gingerbread" house for a city competition he, um, never actually entered.

And then we went to Utah to spend Christmas with my parents. That was the best. Maxwell got to spend time with his grandparents before leaving on his mission, We went to TWO different hot springs, We went hiking with my brother, we went to the most epic New Years Party at the Provo Rec Center, and I made Daniel PERM his hair!

WAIT! You might be saying. Isn't this a HOMESCHOOL blog?! Where's all the HOMESCHOOL info?! 

Well, yes, but you must understand that when you homeschool ALL of your life is part of the homeschool experience. Including homeschool dances put on by your Auntie:

But okay, since you asked, here's the more traditional homeschool stuff:

Daniel took gymnastics that year. He earned the money for it himself, mostly by painting the Blackmore's house.

Daniel was kind of left to his own devises that year. I still did school with him, but he kind of governed himself. He continues to have a passion for the piano and taught himself quite a bit.

And he also got obsessed with Duo Lingo, which encouraged the rest of the family to start Duo Lingo as well.

Hyrum was in full swing with his BYUI classes. Sometimes he would say he was anxious and overwhelmed, but other times he would acknowledge that he had lots of time in the week to do what he wanted.

I wrote this on a Dyslexia Facebook group during that time:

My dyslexic/ADHD 16 year old is doing online university classes with concurrent enrolment. For the first time, he was doing a zoom meeting and it was with students that looked and sounded like they were in their 20s.

I was SO NERVOUS for him! They were doing programming together, and programming requires SPELLING! (eeekkkkkk...my mom heart is racing) and of course he spelled some things wrong, but he was like "oh yeah, I'm dyslexic, but anyway, this is the best way to program this...."

It turned out I was way more stressed than he was and the other students were impressed by his programming skills! Whew! We might make it through this mummas!

My kids were also taking art from Janet. She's always so good to my kiddos! They love art.

My kids weren't Canadian residence, so we couldn't really do anything with the community, but John did invite Hyrum to talk about his experience with Scratch and programming. That was a fun experience for Hyrum.

Also, Abraham finished his All About Reading Level 3.

And I finally started doing a bit of social studies. I thought we couldn't move on until I had taught all the different forms of government, so we went over that (with very few activities) but one activity we did do was when we learned about monarchs, we had the boys be surfs and "harvest" candy, but then they had to give it all to the monarch who then redistributed it out.

When we talked about anarchy, we went on a detour and talked a lot about BLM and the George Floyd riots. 

WHOOO! That's all for 2023!!!

Combine that with what we did in science, and that's half of the year!

By the way, science must have made an inpact on my boys, because Abraham made this balloon....thingy.... and was so proud that he had made an atom! Homeschool for the win!