Sunday, April 24, 2011

Graduation Day!

"The earth is the Lord's and everything in it, the world , and all who live in it."  Psalm 24:1
 
The Lord put on my heart a while ago to have a celebration at the end of our school year.  And so today was our first ever Kindergarten Graduation Day! (We get to do it again next year with Tigger).  It started out as this small little idea and then, well, it seems God had other plans for us:-)

Initially, I decided to have a graduation day for several reasons:

1. I needed some incentive to organized the school work the girls did all year long.
2. I wanted the girls to be able to see how much they have accomplished and grown.
3. I wanted them to share with the family all that they have done and are proud of.
4. I wanted them to know how proud Dad and I were of them.
5. It gave us closure for the year, so that now we are all ready to move on to the next thing.

To prepare, I went through all of their lessons and put them in a binder for each girl. I had started out doing this at the beginning of the year but got out of the habit and by the end of the year all of their lessons were paper clipped together and stuffed in the binders. Then I pulled out their best art work and put it up on the school room walls. We also had up all the words to remember badges and the memory verse for the year. I put up for each girl, their 7 days of creation art work, 100's chart, life cycle paperwork and few other things that reflected their work from the year.

Then, we invited the grandparents over, prayed, had brunch, and invited them to sit for the show. Oh, also this morning I sat down with the girls and we came up with a name for our homeschool that they love.  This is something that has been on my heart all year to do.  We chose Stars of Grace Academy. That was so exciting.  For the first time in a long time both girls agreed completely.  They want to make t-shirts this summer, How fun!

Winnie recited all her Words To Remember for the year (all 26 lessons), sang the Days of the Week song, the Months of the Year song, the B-I-B-L-E song and the Water Cycle song.  Tigger was supposed to sing with her, but got cold feet at the last minute:-)  This was so weird and unexpected.  It really showed the maturity difference between the two girls and how far Winnie has come this year.  At the beginning of the year I could hardly get her to speak up to just me when she was reciting things.  Today she sang out loud and proud!

After the singing and me talking about My Father's World and how awesome it is, we let everyone walk around and view the girls work and look at their binders. The girls were so proud of all that they had accomplished, it was such a wonderful moment for Winnie. Her confidence soared, and she just seemed to grow up right before my eyes. sniff, sniff. It was kind of awesome and I am so thankful to God for allowing me the opportunity to homeschool my kiddos, teach them about His love for them and this beautiful world He has for us and about Jesus sacrifice for their salvation.

As I said at the beginning, I initially had my 5 reasons to hold a Graduation Day, but, again, God's plans for me and the girls were a little different.  As usual, His plans involved our hearts instead of my task list.  My heart is so full for my girls and our school, and so was my husbands.  I love that he was there today, he signed their graduation diplomas, and considers himself the "Superintendent of Schools".  It's been a hard road of several years of prayer to get to this point and I just want to hold on tight to it.  At the same time, I also want to shout from the rooftops that God is amazing and so good and patient and awesome and loves us more that we can possibly know. 

It was such a wonderfully sweet culmination of the year's work.  My hope and prayer is that this is an encouragement to you.  Maybe someone can use these ideas to create their own end of year celebration! 

In Him,

Kim