Dance Finale

 Yesterday ended the 2025-26 American Rhythm season.

Stars

Sparklers

Stripes

Firecrackers

My dancers and me

The whole troupe

We had a blast putting on our Friends and Family show--a good audience always helps. :)

Now we're on a break for a wee bit.

This summer we optional clogging/swing dance workshops on the calendar for those who want to develop their skills a little bit.

And by June, the other teachers and I will be deep in planning and choreography for the 2026-27 season.

As for my personal crew, we are making progress on our academic goals, but we also had a week long spring break--mostly for my mental well-being.

(Though I must admit that the change in schedule did not do my kids much good.  We had a few rough moments that made me very glad we're starting school again tomorrow!)

We finished up our Book of Mormon Family Reader during Morning Meeting, and we started the book of Alma in The Book of Mormon during our after-dinner reading time.  We're still on volume 2 of our 10 volume Bible Stories, and we're keeping up with Come, Follow Me readings--which means we read Exodus 7-13 this week.

Sticking to my plan of having my kids rotate through conducting our morning hymn each day is starting to pay off as Lola and Baymax are actually keeping a correct beat and form in both 3/4 and 4/4 times.  

They fought so long and so hard!

The rest of the kids love leading the music (actually, not Little Princess, but at least she's gracious about taking her turn), and my gut tells me that Mister Man is a future church choir director.  He's a natural.

The teens and I finished Great Expectations (I think I recorded that already?) and A Midsummer Night's Dream.  We only have one title left on our high school list this year, so we'll be starting The Screwtape Letters tomorrow.  

For geography our last section on Vietnam is history, and we'll complete that over the course of the week ahead.

The rest of the kids and I are still reading about Mother Teresa, and we're still working on Shadow Spinners.  Evenings have been very full with church activities, CAP, and Tahitian dance practices, so our bedtime readings are few and far between.  

The CAP awards ceremony took place this past week.  We didn't expect any awards for any of our CAP kids, and I stayed home with Lola and Baymax because of some behaviors earlier in the day, but each kid got something!

For serving at Wreaths Across America

For aerospace accomplishments

For physical fitness

We actually got out on a hike recently.

Beowulf has been begging for the chance to go on one, and I had to work so hard mentally to make space for it.  It's been on my mind lately that even though my kids are tweens and teens, I need to treat hiking/walking in nature as necessary therapy instead of as introductory science for young ones

It's been so long since we've done anything like this.

"Pride rock"

playing Little John and Robin Hood

I love Google Lens! 
We looked up these cute little umbrella trees and found out they are Mayapples.

Hiding

Stacking

Expounding????

It was an incredibly positive return to a habit we lost and need to redevelop.

Oh!  I found some pictures of the kids' swing dance workshop.

And I'm reminded that Mister Man and Ladybug both finished their grammar books.

Our focus is slowly shifting from this school year to this summer.  Camp registrations, scholarship applications, and travel plans are taking hours and hours of our time.

But!

We do have work to finish!

And we're diving back in tomorrow morning.