Assessment 2024-25: Ladybug

 

This picture of Ladybug is one of my all-time favorites.  She's beautiful, strong, fierce, ready to defend her friends, living totally in the moment.

Ladybug grew in many wonderful ways this year.  My favorite developments in her are spiritual and social/emotional.  She's always cared about her testimony of Jesus Christ, but I saw her testimony deepen as she gathered courage to share it publicly and as she worked on her personal scripture study and prayer habits.  Socially/emotionally, she made a lot of mistakes in her peer relationships, but she listened to counsel and made changes.  This has led to her relationships deepening in positive ways.

My favorite story about her friendships has to do with the picture above.  She ended up making a social mistake that sent her home early from Girls' Camp.  When her friends learned about her leaving, they were up in arms, ready to defend her--to march to our house and bring her back if they could!  Ladybug's church leaders and I both tear up every time this story is told.  She didn't really have good friends like this before this year.  

It's a beautiful development in Ladybug's life.

Academically, Ladybug made progress in all areas of study.

Math

She completed Teaching Textbooks Math 5 and worked her way through about 2/3 of Math 6. Originally, I wanted her to complete Math 6 this summer, but I've felt compelled to move her back to paper and pencil math for the year ahead.  I gave her a placement test, and she needs to repeat the Math 5 level of the planned curriculum.  

This sounds like she hasn't made progress, but that's not true.  She's better at mental math--simple addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division than she was at the start of the year.  She's been introduced to decimals and fractions, and she's developing competence in these areas.  She's also increased her ability to understand what word problems are asking for.  

Math has always been Ladybug's weakest academic area, and I think a repeat of Math 5 in a different format will be a blessing for her in the long run.  If there are areas that are easy for her, it will build her confidence, which will, in turn, give her strength to handle hard things.

Morning Meeting

Ladybug was an active participant in all of our Morning Meetings.  She read, sang, answered questions, learned to lead music in 3/4, 4/4, and 2/4 time, memorized scriptures, and contributed spiritual insights to our daily lessons.

Evening Reading

Ladybug loves books.  She may have fallen asleep a few times because she was exhausted, but she never fought reading time, and never missed it if she could help it.  She paid attention to plot development, character development, settings, and moral lessons, often sharing insights that blessed us all.

American Rhythm

Ladybug was moved into the advanced dance group this year!  She did a great job, participating in all of our rehearsals and performances.  She was friendly with our audiences, winning them over with her delightful smile.  

Everything Else

I based our Kid School time on The Peaceful Press Playful Pioneers 2.  

And we followed it beautifully for a month, then we simplified in the second month, then we simplified further for the rest of the year.  Ultimately, we followed the history reading with pretty good faith. 

We did quite a few written narrations to add some power to our daily oral narrations.

Then we added Shakespeare Stories for a little bit of fun.

     *King Lear

     *Twelfth Night

     *The Taming of the Shrew

I needed history to be less literature-based and more straight-forward for my crew so we made our way all the way through The Story of Science: Newton in the Middle.  In the spring semester, we added brief lessons from The Golden Book of Natural History. 

As with history, we did daily oral narrations and occasional written narrations.

As part of the Playful Pioneers 2 plan, we memorized all 50 states and capitals over the course of the school year.  Ladybug got quite good at all of them.  We also did a few mapping activities.

A few times we did Rod and Staff grammar lessons from the Level 2 book.

When we got adventurous, we turned to  Under the Home for enrichment. We explored 

     *Art Appreciation

     *Studio Art  (we did one or two Art for Kids Hub lessons, too)

     *Geography

     *Music Appreciation

For a couple of months, we did a great job heading out for weekly hikes. Then we shifted to working on Couch to5K training.  Ladybug is a happy hiker, but her asthma makes running hard.  She willingly walked/ran in combination to cover as much ground as she safely could.

Back in the late summer, she participated in our 5 week homeschool soccer "league."  She's a champion forward amongst her peers.  (I just realized how funny it is that running while playing soccer isn't a problem, but running for training is hard. :))

On Her Own

Ladybug loves to draw, crochet, do calligraphy, make jewelry, do her nails, do her hair, and pursue any other creative process that comes her way.  She's really an artist.

But she wants to be either a NICU nurse or a firefighter as her career someday.  

That's okay. 

She can be a creative nurse or firefighter.

At any given time, Ladybug can be found reading fantasy novels or writing notes to her friends.   

This year she did branch out a bit in her reading, discovering the power of novels based on reality when she found one about a bi-racial girl trying to find her way in both black and white worlds.  As a black child of white parents, Ladybug felt a lot of compassion for the main character and came to me to talk out the big feelings this book presented.  Since then, I've seen her browsing more reality-based novels about teen girls, especially teen girls of color.

Looking Forward

Ladybug starts high school this fall! 

Early morning seminary

Study for credits

More personal accountability

Heavier work load

She's nervous, but happy about what's coming next!