Look Who Turned 16!

It's LittleE !!
Her birthday was last week and she had a wonderful party with friends after LittleA's graduation.

They grow up so fast

:happy sigh:

Our First Graduate!!

We named our little school Clearview Christian Academy and have successfully graduated our first student.

Over the weekend LittleA participated in a graduation ceremony with other homeschooled seniors. Here is the group of 15 graduates from the surrounding area. They each chose the colors they wanted to wear with LittleA choosing maroon and gold.

Here they are hanging out and waiting for the ceremony to begin.
This is the speaker, Dr. John Geib, greeting people before the ceremony. He had a wonderful message for the graduates and a homework assignment: read The Lord of the Rings 5 times in the next 10 years and report back to him in 2020. His message centered around Frodo and Gollum, two characters in the books.

Here is LittleA walking in to Pomp and Circumstance, of course.

Here she is seated with the group, getting ready to receive her diploma.
Each student received their diploma from mom and dad, (those pictures were blurry and I'm crying, so.....) and moms were handed roses. A message from the parents to the graduate was also read by the speaker.
Many of the students in the group had never met before, but these 5 knew each other and had a great time.

Here we all are after the ceremony and reception.

It was a wonderful afternoon.

Congratulations, LittleA on your accomplishment. We love you!

Happy Birthday!!

Along with graduation planning, we also have birthdays to celebrate this month. A few days ago it was BigJ's birthday-- 12 candles!

Wow, where does the time go? As you can see, he's a huge LEGO Star Wars fan.
Happy 12th Birthday, BigJ!!

Preparing for Graduation

This week is all about getting ready for LittleA's high school graduation. Actually, we've been preparing for a few months. When you homeschool through to graduation, things are a little different. We've been part of organizing the graduation ceremony and all the parts in it. We had to order our own cap and gown. We even spent time developing what we wanted on the diploma and ordered that as well. Thank goodness there's a company that specializes in homeschool graduation supplies!

LittleA also created and put together her graduation announcements.

Yesterday, we started putting together things for her display. Here is one of her senior pictures.

We also put together a shadow box frame to hold her

solo and ensemble medals and Summit Choral pins.

Next up, going through shoe boxes of photos and pulling some for the display as well. And food, of course. Can't forget the food; it's also in the works.

Spring Band Concert

LittleE is a member of the Stark Co. Home School Band, with this being her 7th year. She began playing clarinet in the 4th grade and has become very good at her instrument. The band is currently directed my Mr. John Bridges who is doing an excellent job helping these young people become better musicians.

They use the band room at Malone U. for practice during the week, and have always held their concerts in there....until now. For this concert they were allowed to use the auditorium/sanctuary. It was wonderful to see them on a beautiful stage and the seating was 100% more comfortable, which is a huge plus. They played Days of Glory, St. Anthony Chorale and Variation, Early American Hymn Song, Fantasy for Band, Scheherazade selections, and John Williams Movie Adventures.

All the pieces were wonderful, but they were all too large to post here except for a partial recording of Fantasy For Band. Enjoy.

Legacy Co-op Drama Class

Our homeschool co-op focuses on extra-curricular and fine arts experiences. For the junior high/high school students, that usually means drama. They love it!! It's always fun to see what they come up with and this session they worked on improvisation with Mrs. B.

This is the "troupe" performing their first improv. on program night. They did a fine job getting into their characters; two college students, a couple on a first date, and two FBI agents. Mrs. B made a great waitress as well.Here's LittleE with MissK performing their parts very well.Next, 3 of the students, including LittleE, did something called "sit, stand, bend". It was very funny. Throughout the "conversation", they continually change positions to where one of them is always standing, sitting, or bending. It turned out great.It seems they developed some great improvisational skills. Good work, everyone!

Co-op Art Class-- Tessellations

We finally finished up our tessellation projects and I think they came out great. The site where I found this lesson has it listed for use with middle school, but it worked great for my 3rd - 6th grade girls class as well. I had the girls choose a book they had read and to think of three images related to that book for their drawings.

Here are their finished projects. They all turned out fantastic! I really wanted to make one myself as I love this kind of stuff, but time got away from me. Maybe this summer?? Hmm. It just might be a possibility.

Lord of the Dance

LittleE has a birthday coming up and really wanted to see Lord of the Dance. They were in the area for a one-night only show. So, we got two tickets and went last night. It was fantastic!

We were sitting quite a ways up on the second level but could see extremely well. Here's the view from our seats.
We really weren't allowed to take pictures, but I took a few without the flash at the end of the show. I figured since we were so far up we weren't going to give anything away :lol:
Here's LittleE at the end of the show as they were already tearing down the set. If they ever come back this way, we already decided we want to go again, but with one exception-- we'd like 4 rows from the front instead of 4 rows from the back! Enjoy this short clip from the encore performance at the end of the show.