Our Week in Review - Finishing the 20th Century

We have plowed through 36 weeks of school and have officially called it "done". It has truly been an incredible year studying 20th century history and I have learned so much! Perhaps I will share more at a later time about my ponderings of the forces of culture and change, and how christians have responded to the cultural changes around them in this century, and how we need to be salt and light in a world that seems to be spinning out of control. So many thoughts swirling around my mind at times ~ processing and pondering what the study of history means to ME and to our family. How should it affect us? And how should we affect it?

In any case, we read, we discussed, we learned. The boys and I did not quite finish learning about all the recent presidents and are still working on the last few (shh! don't tell them they're still learning! ;-) I got behind in reading to them the last few weeks, so two weeks ago we studied the presidencies of Johnson and Nixon (looooong explanation about Watergate ~ try it sometime, it's challenging to explain in simple terms). Our last week of school we learned about Ford, Carter, and Reagan. All in one week! We still have to cover the presidencies of Bush Sr, Clinton, and W. Many of the events of George W's presidency we have discussed as a family numerous times, so those are more familiar. We have also talked quite a bit about Obama's presidency so far ~ what he's done compared to what he promised, and what he promised compared to what we truly need.


For the last two years (Tapestry Years 3 and 4) each of the older 4 children have kept a Presidents Notebook. They have written down information about every single president as we studied them in order. It's fun to see how their penmanship has improved over the last two years, and how much more they were able to write as they have gotten older! We had hoped to finish it completely, through George W, before our end of the year celebration coming up this Friday, but I don't think that is going to happen. Still, they are fun tools for helping us remember all we have studied, and they help us see the common threads that have run through all the presidencies from the very beginning to now, despite huge cultural shifts in our nation and world.

We are doing lots of preparation this week for our end of the year celebration. Tapestry recommends a unit celebration at the end of each 9 week unit throughout the year, to mark the end of a period of study and to do it in such a way as to put an exclamation mark on it! Our end of the year celebration will be all 4 unit celebrations rolled into one. Each of us (me and my husband included) will be dressing up as either specific characters from the 20th century, or as representations of certain time periods (such as the hippie movement - that would be me! haha). The children are very excited about it, and actually so am I.

In addition to this being a fun way to end our 20th century history studies, I also view it as similar to a public school open house or science fair ~ where the students can display their projects and parents ooh and ahh over them. Because my husband and I are usually the only ones oohing and ahhing at the children throughout the year, this is an opportunity for them to share with a slightly wider audience (family and friends). I am praying they will handle it with grace and humility.

Hopefully Little Man will remember all his lines (18), L will have fun but not be *overly* dramatic (especially with his toy gun), G and G will speak up loud enough to be heard, and C will fully enjoy wearing his Sunday suit. :-) I don't want to give away more clues than that ~ you'll have to check back on Saturday to find out who was who and see pictures of my hippiness!