Last Day of Homeschool 2016-2017

Friday, June 2nd was our last day of the 2016-2017 school year!!! 

We started our day with donuts.

That evening we presented our End of School projects to Daddy.

Faith read a short book.

Mig read two paragraphs he wrote.

Selah presented a PowerPoint on Wu Zetian - the only woman emperor of China.

Gabe presented a book report project he did on the book The Giver by Lois Lowry

He presented it like this: 

We have got to work on not holding the report over his face. 

Our End of Year Unit study was on Astronomy. The kids did star and constellations lap books and a poster project on one planet. (You can see them behind the kids in these pictures.)

We also learned a song about the planets. It is super cute:

Byron started laughing at me rapping and so I nearly lost it, too! 

After the presentations, Byron presented their Certificates of Promotion.

Mig could not keep from smiling!!

Then Byron encouraged me as their teacher. 

The kids were all promoted to the next grade, so in the fall we will have a 7th, 5th, 2nd and Kindergartener! 

Hooray for another successful year of homeschooling!! 

Scarborough Faire Renaissance Festival Field Trip

I have been wanting to take the kids to the Scarborough Faire for such a long time! Finally, this year I organized a field trip for our homeschool group on their reduced price student day and it was so much fun!!!

I really love how it feels like you have stepped back in time. This was such a neat opportunity for the kids to see their history book come to life. 

We were able to see a joust and sword fight, which was so fun to watch!

Gabe and Mig did some archery.

The only thing Faith really wanted to do was ride a horse. She was so excited when we found these ponies to ride!

The boys also played King of the Log and enjoyed trying to knock each other down.

After knocking Mig off the log 3 times, Gabe was declared the King of the Log. 

We even rode a giant swing! This was my favorite part!

We saw some interesting sights.

And ate some yummy food! The kids loved the sorbet served in an orange peel.

 We were sad to have to leave, but were sent off with a song and cannon fire! 

It was a super fun and educational day! I'm so glad we went!

Choir Concerts

The end of the school year brings in all of our final performances. May was full of choir concerts! 

We love Kids Praise at our church. The kids are learning music and how to use music to praise our Creator. It is an awesome program and one I have feel humble to be able to be a part of. 

Here is the PreK and Kindergarten concert. (If you are reading this post from your email inbox, you may have to click over to the full blog to see the video clips.) It is pretty short - only 3 songs long. This is Faith's choir and the choir I direct. It is so much fun to direct these little children - but the best part is seeing their sweet smiles each week and getting little hugs along the way. 

Selah and Mig are in the 1st through 5th grade choir. This video is a little over 30 minutes long. 

If you don't have time to view they full performance, here is a short section of it where Selah has a drama part (she is the little one on the left). Mig, Faith and I also appear as non-speaking roles! :) 

This was Gabe's first year in the Middle School Choir. This video is 37 minutes long. They just got back from a Choir Trip to Georgetown where they performed for the residents of Sun City.  

As above, if you don't want to watch the whole performance, I made a shorter clip of just the song that Gabe sings a solo in. 

With Byron and I both being musical, we love that the kids are so involved in music as well - and what a blessing to belong to a church that can provide so many wonderful music opportunities for them!

Homeschool Field Day 2017

I remember when I was considering homeschooling for our family, one of the biggest worries I had was that my kids would be missing out on the fun school stuff. My worries were all for nothing. I don't feel like they have missed out on anything. Part of that is that we have become part of a community of homeschoolers. We do dramas, fun runs, parties on holidays, experiments, field trips and we organize a field day. 

This year the weather did not cooperate with us for field day. It was chilly, cloudy and SO WINDY! It was so windy that the buckets for our bean bag toss continually blew away - even after being weighted down with full water bottles. The kids still had so much fun, though! 

One of our favorite events is the three-legged race. 

 Selah and Alton moved like one person. They won 2 out of 3 races and were so fun to watch!

Last year Faith opted out of the 3-legged race. This year she decided to run with a friend. Walking by herself is hard  - when you bind one of her feet to another person, it was almost impossible for her. They took it slow and her little friend was so patient. 

After awhile, Selah and some others noticed the difficulty they were having and went over to the girls, grabbed their hands and helped them cross the finish line. It was the. sweetest. thing. ever. These are the kind of kids we are raising. We are teaching reading, writing and math, but we are also training them to look for ways to help those that are smaller, younger, different, or have some kind of need. They are learning to love others and to love them well. These girls that would have been considered embarrassingly slow in any other race (and quite possibly laughed at and made fun of), were encouraged, helped and able to successfully finish the race. 

A few of the events were cancelled because of the weather, so the kids created their own! They found flat pieces of cardboard and used them to downhill sled. They worked together to drag the pieces up the hill and pushed each other down. 

I think this ended up being everyone's favorite part of the day! 

I am so glad that we have the freedom and opportunity to homeschool our children and so blessed by our homeschool community that makes it so much more fun! 

Cinco de Mayo

Every year since Selah was born, we have celebrated Cinco de Mayo with a fun party! We eat Mexican food and get pan dulces from our local Hispanic market.

Each kid makes a mini-pinata. 

Then they beat the living daylight out of it! 

This year we also listened to Linda Ronstadt - Papa Serna's favorite - and we played La Loteria.  

Our Fiesta has become a tradition all of us look forward to every year!! 

New Smiles

We have some new smiles in the Serna house these days. 

Mig is loosing teeth like crazy!

 While we were in San Antonio for Spring Break, Mig lost his first top tooth. He swallowed it! 

Less than two weeks later he lost his other front top tooth. 

How cute is that new smile?!?

Mig is not the only one with a new smile. Selah is getting a new smile, too!!

This is sweet Selah before braces:

And Selah now:

She looks so much older already!!

At church, there is one lady that calls us the "Smiley family". Now we have new smiles to share!