Noah's new hobby - Stop-Motion videos

During Night of the Arts, which is a performance event where the students can perform things on stage, at our coop Blue Oak, Noah was very impressed by another boy, who had made a stop motion video that he showed. With no help from me he went online, found some you tube videos and found out, all by himself, how to make stop motion videos. He has then inspired his brothers and some friends, too, and this is one of the videos he has made. Quite impressive I must say!

Water slide day with CC

During our second semester at cc the kids could gather points by reciting the John 1:1-6 in English and Latin. They had to earn 100 point by the end of the year to earn a water slide day. They got 106 points!! And yesterday was that fun day!! One of the families in CC have the perfect yard for this and we all spent yesterday there! It was such a great day!

I don't remember if i mentioned before that Marlee did the memory master this year. It was all on his initiative and he did all the work himself. What is memory master you might wonder. Well, during the year all students, who do foundations (the first level of CC, which is age 4-12) is supposed to memorize a bunch of facts. More specifically it is...

• The entire timeline of 160 events from creation to modern times;
• Twenty-four sentences about history;
• Twenty-four science questions and answers;
• Multiplication tables through the fifteens plus squares and cubes, conversions, and math laws;
• Continents, countries, states, capitals, and physical features from around the world;
• Twenty-four definitions or lists from English grammar;
• Latin vocabulary lists, conjugations, declensions, and John 1:1–7 in Latin; and
• The forty-four U.S. presidents.

They can choose to recite them all at the end of the year to prove they know them all. I would never be able to do this!! Marlee has tried ones before and failed at the second level (there are three). This year he made it all the way through and passed level three last Monday!! We celebrated that yesterday :-)

Water spurt fight (see how our director got marlee good :-)

Balloon fight

As you can see, this was a pretty awesome day!! Our both coops are now finished for this school year but we will keep going for about anot month. We have some catching up to do :-)

Look what I did today!!!

 Note from David today...

 

Smyrna Dunes Park

Last weekend we decided to take the boat out.. it did not really go as planned. We drove down to New Smyrna (about 45 min drive) to put the boat in and see something new. Except, the boat did not want to start. The battery was dead and it didn't help to jump it. We ended up bringing the boat the marina for the yearly service, which is needed anyways, and let them take a look.

Without a boat and all the way down in new smyrna we decided to explore and visit a new place. We visited Smyrna Dunes Park, where we had never been before, and where it was fine to bring a dog. It was a wonderful place! The beach really reminded me of the beaches on Fårö, where my parents live. 

Walking from the parking lot to the beach...

View from a tower. We could see the light house in ponce inlet on the other side of the inlet.

The light house in Ponce inlet

It was more or less impossible to get s picture of these guys...

It is nice to sleep in your own bed with your brother after a fun day at the park! ❤️

It ended up being a great day despite the boat issues and we found another little piece of paradise that we might not have found otherwise. 

Blue Oak Graduation

Last Thursday it was time for our second coop graduation, Blue Oak. Both of our coops moved to new churches this year and now Blue Oak is in Ormond beach and CC is in Daytona. Both groups were smaller this year than the year before due to covid but I have liked the smaller groups since you can get to know pretty much every family. We have had a great year and a lot of fun! Having a baby in the middle of it surely affected the amount of school work that we got done but that is the beauty of home schooling, we can catch up when it works for us and focus on the present things when they need extra attention :-) While being too busy with being pregnant and having baby David we focused on doing the coop schoolwork and put other things aside. Now we are getting back to math and reading and some smaller projects such as telling time (Gabriel) and type writing (Noah and Marlee). 

Rafael's Pre-K class

Gabriel's 1sg grade class

Noah's 3rd grade class

Marlee's 5th grade class (the three to the left)

All kids

Most classes include 3 different grades, so Marlee's classes for example are for 4th - 6th grade.

For most of the year some of the boys were more excited to go to our cc coop than the Blue oak one. Mainly because Marlee had more friends at cc through the years and he tend to spread his opinion among his siblings. However, by the end of the school year Marlee made some good friends at Blue Oak and now he really likes it. We could have stopped going to Blue Oaks but I really like the families there and the way it is run, and I felt like it would be worth it in the long run, so I made us stay despite the boys' complains and "dislike". The other brothers have always had friends at the coop but have adapted their verbal brother's attitude. There have also been several good lessons to learn ghrough all of this :-)