How We Celebrate the Last Day of Homeschool | Traditions to Make the End of the Year Memorable

[Music] hey everybody Welcome to the wock way I'm Jessica today's video is going to be all about our end of The Homeschool year Traditions now we homeschool year round in fact we've pretty much always homeschool year round because for us homeschool is just kind of a way of life but I didn't like missing out on like the celebration of the end or the start of a home school year but specifically the end of a home school year we've worked hard we all deserve to celebrate we we've we've earned it we've earned something to mark that you have completed a year of homeschool me as a teacher Kevin as a teacher Emily as a student like we all deserve it so years ago I decided that the Friday before Memorial Day here in the US um which is this coming Friday would be our unofficial last day of school no matter where we were like it didn't matter if we' finished the workbooks or the curriculum or whatever we would just stop and typically we take Memorial day off we may even take the remainder of that week off completely and then we roll into kind of like a summer school schedule through the summer and then we start back September 1st wherever that falls is always our first day of school because that's when Hogwarts goes back um and if it's good enough for Harry Potter it's good enough for us and that is kind of what we've always done it's never really mattered to me what we finished because if we didn't finish and I want to finish we'll just pick it back up in the fall or we'll keep doing it through the summer depending on what it is I just wanted to celebrate that we've completed a year of homeschooling and so this Friday will be our last day of school and to celebrate our last day of school for the past five or six years we've done a few of the same things and I love them because none of them are like huge none of them are this big thing for me they're most simple things that we've done year after year and I love that Traditions don't have to be like huge to be Traditions so the first thing we do is the night before the last day of school so Thursday night I typically will leave out um a congrats grad Banner we've used the same burlap Banner that I ordered from Amazon I don't know for probably four years now um and then some sort of last day of school gift typically this is you know things that are going to keep her kind of busy through the summer and still like sneaky learning as well as stuff for summer the probably stuff I would have bought anyway so um a swimsuit flip-flops if she needs them Sunglasses if she needs them uh a new water bottle games for pool schooling because we absolutely love pool schooling which is a lot of what you're going to see today because she didn't need bathing suits and sunglasses and fp- flops cuz thank goodness all of ours from last year still fit um and then what we do for the next day is we enjoy all of our new stuff probably have a pool party um we always take cap and gown pictures and I love it so much because it is the same cap and gown that Kevin and I both graduated college with um he graduated with his AA a few months later I graduated with my bachelor's and now Emily wears it every single year she's wore it since preschool um and watching her grow in to this cap and gown has been so bittersweet because there was literally like piles around her and now well she almost fits into it um so we do that every single year just as like kind of a commemorative I love having those pictures and then her favorite part which is the burning or the destroying of the schoolwork I stay up late Thursday night and make sure I have everything scanned in so our portfolio can be completed and I don't have to worry about that and she takes every piece of paper school work that she did throughout the year and she destroys it in the last couple years her favorite way to do that has been burning it she has probably become a little pyromaniac but she loves it we have done different things we've ripped it up um we've paper shredded burning has definitely been the favorite it is something she looks forward to every single year um and then we normally end our day with dinner of her choice and sometimes that's super simple um other times she's like I just want a cake like I just want to celebrate with a cake and so we will celebrate with a cake and I buy the number like for whatever grade she just finished so like when she finished third grade I bought a number three um and that's it this year she's she has requested um a flaman steak dinner because my girl has good taste and so Kevin will deliver on that cuz he's the girl Master not me um and that is kind of it we just have a simple celebration that being said I'm gonna show you before um she tears into it in a few days what her last day of school gifts are going to be what I've gotten for her and then this year we're doing something a little extra because this has probably been one of the more difficult homeschool years for us which I will do a reflection on that in the next coming week so you will hear all about that um but I will just say that hormones and emotions have been a big part of our homeschool year and so we are going to do something extra for her um next week okay the first thing that I got for her is one of these you know kind of plastic bags so that will hold all of her beach pool stuff um and then also we always always do something to read over the summer and this is a series that she has been watching um on Netflix so I thought she was like the book set so I got her the eight book set of the last kids on Earth and then always some sort of activities to keep her busy through the summer so I got the sixth to seventh grade um daily summer activities which I will share more next week about what our summer homeschool plans are and so this will be one of those things but there will be a lot more of fun stuff too what I loved about this particular one is that each day is essentially one page so here is Monday and then the back of the same page if I can turn it is also Monday and then the next page is Tuesday and I already checked the entire book is like that so I can just pull out a page and leave it on her clipboard like this is the one page you need to do today and that way she's not looking at this book and overwhelmed or looking ahead and being anxious about what's to come because that is most definitely Emily's personality it can just give her one page at a time and sometimes the summer ones are not one page and so in the past I would have to like copy and P um you know like copy and try to make it work and it just it wasn't great so this first of all was affordable I got it for less than $7 second of all it's one page and I love that it's not overwhelming it includes a little bit of spelling a little bit of writing some reading comprehension some vocabulary and a little bit of math like I think it's going to be the perfect just kind of review um for the summer and then we always get stuff for pool schooling because like I said that is one of our big summer things um if you have no clue what I'm talking about I will link a video up here with even more wonderful pool school resources so the first thing I did was get her her own Bluetooth speaker um our waterproof one died last year this one lights up it does all kind of really really cool things she's going to love that it's hers like not one that she has to share um I got her a new float I am not going to blow this up on camera Let's see we got her Aqua Bingo which is the amazing animal Edition so it is an animal edition of bingo that happens to be waterproof so that's going to be fun and you get to dive for the little pieces and come back up um we also got the seek and splash number dive so basically you have all of these number cards and you have to dive down and find numbers that would make that number like some sort of equation that would make it guest and 10 Splash you guys know we love guest and 10 it has become a favorite here recently so I thought having the splash version would be fun cuz it just means it's waterproof and this happens to be the Animal Planet which is like a double win and then let's see is there anything else in here no and then the last thing that wouldn't fit that looked like a really really fun game is this ring push so you get like 25 five different combination cards and you put all the Rings at the bottom of the pool and then you have to like dive down and sequence them on your hands the way you saw them pictured on the cards so this will be a really fun one for her to play when she has friends over actually all of them will be fun to play when she has friends over but they're really going to love this one and then the last surprise that we have for her is next week we are going to just do a open to close day at Disney um she is so silly she has been begging to go down and not stay on property because she hasn't rode the tram like from the parking lot to the parks in I don't know years now because we haven't done um just a day trip in Forever we've just you know kind of gone down and stayed and so that was her request we were like what's you know if you could do anything she's like I want to go to Disney but just for the day and ride the tram and so that's what we're going to do she wants to ride the tram and do all four parks um and she has listed all the rides she wants to ride at each of those Parks so that is what we're going to do we're going to go to Disney and have an Emily last day of school day um to celebrate the fact that we survived this year if I'm being totally honest because like I said it wasn't really a hard year it was just different than any other year has looked thus far and so that was a lot of changes and transitions um for all of us but for her specifically so I will tell you more about that in the coming weeks if you want to see what we're doing for summer school stay tuned that will be next week and then Reflections should be the week after that but before I go I would love to hear about your end of The Homeschool year traditions because I love hearing about what all the different families do to celebrate the accomplishment of finishing another year so let me know down in the comments how your family celebrates [Music]