These pictures are from the formal banquet, the final activity of our four day Simulations Week.
I (Noreen) am the president of a non-profit youth leadership organization. We sponsor Sim Week every year and it takes an entire year to plan and put together. This year was our best one yet, due to amazing mentors, volunteers and youth! I especially loved getting to work with my sister-in-law Rebecca who served as our event manager. We wanted the youth to learn about different government types and hopefully come to appreciate their own more. They were placed in either a Monarchy, Theocracy, Socialist, Totalitarian, or Tribal country for the week and given different objectives, problems, resources, and secrets to deal with. The youth were excited and engaged the whole time, learning the art of negotiation, lobbying, governing and diplomacy. Pending planet destruction, leader assassinations, and world war only added to the excitement!
Whitney says,"You know that moment where five different countries are coming together for the final peace talks and suddenly everything they were all agreeing on five minutes ago is out the window because of some payment squabbles? And then you realize that not only to you have to endure the unpredictability of your fellow politicians while masking the fact that you have secretly become the dictator of your country, but that you have suddenly have been appointed speaker of the house and have to single-handedly keep a week's worth of negotiations from going down the drain due to over-talkative delegates?
For the last three years I have loved teaching art! This year we focused on learning about different influential artists and art styles and doing pieces inspired by them. After many extra hours of preparation, we held our annual art show at the local library. Here are some of my favorite pieces that we did this year.
I wanted to teach pointillism to my students this year. (Pictures made from tiny dots of color placed close together.) This mural (all done with dots of paint on the end of pencil erasers) was a team effort and a labor of love. It took well over 60 man hours to complete. I just love the way it turned out looking like a beautiful patchwork quilt. An experience the students will not soon forget!
Daniel stole the first scene in his homeschool production of William Shakespeare's "The Tempest". He played Boatswain, and did a great job ordering everyone around during the storm. We spent hours and hours memorizing his lines, and he did an amazing job! They did 4 full length shows over 3 days. Daniel can't wait to participate again next year!
Ellie found Daniel's old chemistry set in a cupboard above the fridge. I'm not sure what she was looking for up there, but she's been begging me to let her experiment with it ever since. So Saturday we broke it out and she had all kinds of fun creating different colors with her chemical reactions. She expected to blow something up, and Janey acted like Ellie was likely to kill herself at any moment, but I assured them it was all safe if they didn't sniff, taste or splash in their eyes. Ellie was filled with wonder with every fizz or color change and took her experimenting very seriously.
Knights of Freedom is a club, like scouts, where there are a ton of groups and each group meets together every other week to learn about famous men in history like Christopher Columbus, Davy Crockett and a ton of other people. In Knights of Freedom we also learn about the knightly virtues and once every year all of the groups come together for two days and we get swords and shields. We learn 5 knightly virtues. Things like learning to work as a team, earn a weapon, prove yourself in battle, go on a quest and other stuff. At the end we fought a lot of bad guys. My favorite thing about the summit was the big battle at the end.
Daniel and I have the opportunity to spend the whole year this year, one-on-one. 12 years old is a critical development time for those with dyslexia, and we felt the best choice was to spend a year focusing on his education. We had a wonderful week of long walks, goal setting, biking to the library, reading "Where the Red Fern Grows", going out to lunch. The harder stuff will start this week, but the focus our first week relationship. Here's to a great year!
Janey started 4th grade this week! She finally gets to fulfill her life long wish of riding the bus everyday. It was strange to see her off for the day, after having her home for so long, but she is bright and loves her new teacher.
Ellie also started first grade this week. Above is just before her first day. Below is just after returning from her first day. Ellie has a wonderful new teacher and is doing great with her reading.
We took a trip to the State Capitol to see the State Legislature in session. Even though we didn't get to see that much of it, (about 30 minutes) it was pretty cool. They were talking about horse and burro rights and something about purified water. Then we ate lunch. The food was good. After that we got to take a tour of the capitol. (It's huge!) It was interesting to see the place where all of our State's laws are made.
Steve L. took the challenge again this year to watch, read or listen to 17 Shakespeare plays in one week! He especially enjoyed it this year since he could understand what they were saying this time around. He was crowned with 3 others who finished the challenge. (They actually have all semester to complete the assignment, but they enjoy the competition.) He has been exposed to more Shakespeare in the last year than most people will study in a life time. The awesome thing is how much they love it!
The Knight's Summit of 2010 was the best one ever! The two day simulation taught the boys (age 8-12) the virtues of Knighthood, they went on a quest, participated in the Queen's tournament, had the final battle and the ending feast. Daniel had a blast and was so worn out at the end of the two days he could hardly walk.
This picture doesn't even begin to show the 150 boys and 75 villains (dad's, big brothers and uncles) that participated in the final battle to return the kingdom to the rightful King and Queen. (And it's not just because my thumb is in the way! I'm still getting the hang of my new iPhone.)
Everything is more fun with cousins!
Grandma and Aunt Emily made it all possible! They bought all the food and pre-cooked all our amazing meals. The pioneers never ate this good!
The hand carts weighed 180 lbs, BEFORE we put all our gear in them!
Add some dirt, scruff and sunburn and my hubby only gets more handsome!
The toddlers got to ride in covered wagons when they got too tired to walk. Whitney and her best friend Natalie, who we adopted and brought along, spent most of the trek pulling the kiddie wagons.
Aunt Em made everyone's day with smores around the camp fire!
Steve says he would never want to hit the trail without his mom along. She was so fun, a hearty pioneer and made all these beautiful pioneer dresses for us!
All the youth gathered around our campfire to hear Steve's comedy skits. He's so funny! The youth in the camp really enjoyed each other.
Our pioneer Family!
