Homeschool Co-op Graduation!

We belong to a homeschool coop called NIKE (Naturally Into Kids Education), where once a week the kids attend a class of various subjects taught by a group of us homeschool moms.  We all take turns teaching and the kids covered recorder (music), creative thinking, world cultures, science, and writing. The year ended in the beginning of May and recently, we've been practicing for end of year recital/graduation. The kids were grouped in age categories and given bird names.  Ages 3-6 were the Sparrows, ages 7-9 were the Blue Jays, 1o and up were the Falcons and Eagles.  The little ones, the Sparrows came every week but they didn't take all of those classes.  They mainly did art and a little bit of science and they did attend a few of the cultures classes on Native Americans.  For the recital the Sparrows along with the BlueJays sang a song I taught them.  It called Rockin' Robin by Bobby Day. Its cute; they bounce, chirp with their hands and flap their "wings."  

Additionally, the Blue Jays performed a variety of things such as recorder, they presented what the most favorite thing they learned in science class was (taken from biology, physics, and chemistry) and also performed a shadow puppet play called The Great Ball Game: a Muskogee story.  The play is based on the book by the same name found here.

The play was taken from the cultures lecture that Adam taught the kids. The idea of a shadow puppet play came from the Indian culture, as in from India. Apparently the people from India are responsible for creating this type of play. So we combined two cultures for this play. The puppets were hand made from posterboard and reinforced by clear contact paper.  Wires to control the puppets were attached to them and each of the animals had a mouth that opened and closed, it was very cool!  Two of our talented moms created the puppets after the kids traced them and cut them out. After all of the kids did their performances, they received certificates of completion, then we ate dessert!