Thursday, May 15, 2014

Finishing Up!


Ahhh, it's my favorite time of the year--the time when everything is finishing up and winding down.  The elementary co-op finished up the first week in May with a fun graduation picnic.  Now Caleb is in Rivendell full-time too!

We had our last Rivendell meeting Tuesday afternoon.  First Christine made a fun Jeopardy game for the younger kids to review their memory work, which was a huge hit.  Then we had our traditional ice cream party, complete with loads of toppings--sliced strawberries and bananas, walnuts, M&Ms, 3 different kinds of cookie crumbs, sprinkles, whipped cream, and chocolate, hot fudge, and caramel sauces.  Yummy!!
On Tuesday Nathan took the AP US Government exam.  He self-studied for that class, so we'll see how it ends up.  He felt pretty good about it--he was studying pretty diligently there at the end!  This afternoon he and Luke both took the AP microeconomics exam.  Christine prepared them really well for that exam, so they were fairly confident about it, unlike most of the other students in the room!  Those are the only APs they are taking, so now they are done, which is a huge relief!  We are currently all enjoying those little Dove chocolate-covered cranberries, as well as apple slices and caramel dip, for a special after-testing treat.  Not all their testing is done, though--they still will take SAT subject tests for US history and chemistry on June 7.  But for today--we celebrate!

Testing through our co-op is Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, so Caleb, Jonathan, Anna, and Grace are gearing up for that next week.  I'm just sending in Nathan and Luke's ACT scores from April for them, so they don't need to take the Stanford tests.  We have a much smaller group this year--only 15 families are testing with us.  That made it a little tricky for me (I'm the one in charge of it for the co-op) to find enough testers for the grade levels, but I think we're okay.  If we go down much lower, though, something might have to change. I'm still thinking through all that.  I think more people are just testing their own kids at home, since now you can do that with both Iowa Basic and Stanford.  That probably works great if you only have a few kids, but it would take a really long time for me, and what would I do with everyone else for all that time?  So we'll see.  But anyway, after testing is done next week, I'll be well and truly done, which will be wonderful!  Then we will just have to work through the summer to finish math books (we're behind where I want people to be) and Latin for Caleb and Jonathan.  And my big school-related priority for the summer is getting Faith reading fluently.  She's really close! 

And on that note, I'm off to exercise.  Some of us have to pay dearly for "celebrations"!

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