Cannon Castle

The school year started with a simple commitment.

Keep showing up even if no one else does.

Simple, but not easy.

The 1st session went pretty well.

Family and friends came to visit often, but it was discouraging when someone new would stop by to see what we were doing, leave shortly after, and never come back.

Our 2nd session started, and by Thursday I was ready to leave early and never come back myself.

I didn't see the point.

Good thing my wife and kids were there.

They reminded me of the commitment I made.

After taking some time to pray (tell God how much I wanted to quit) and reading a story my son told me he heard at camp about George Müller (a man who helped thousands of orphans), I walked back in and finished the rest of the day.

It wasn't until the end of session 2 that a mom posted on Facebook about her son feeling lonely and looking for a place where he could meet friends who liked building with LEGO and playing video games.

We got through the holidays and started the new year with a weekly event we called Bricks & Battles.

We invited homeschool families to bring their pr***en and teen boys to Nexus to hang out and have fun.

It went so well that we added 3 more events for our last session of the year and met more families than our first 3 sessions combined.

One of the hardest parts of living any dream is continuing to show up and put in the work even when it feels like nothing is happening.

Something is always happening.

Even if it's just inside of you.

Keep going. You got this.

Today is our final Bricks & Battles of the school year.

When we started, we didn't know exactly what it would become.

We just knew homeschool kids needed a consistent place to show up, build, play, and spend time together.

I'm glad we kept going.

Thank you to every family who showed up, brought friends, played games, helped clean up, or encouraged us along the way.

We're taking a break for the summer, but we're already looking forward to new adventures when we start back up in August.

This is our last week of the current Cannon Castle schedule at Nexus before summer break.

We're thankful for every family that showed up this school year.

We played games.
We practiced math.
We built with LEGO.
We launched CannonCraft.
We made new friends.
We learned a lot about what families need.

We're taking a break from the weekly schedule over the summer, then planning to start back up next school year.

As we plan what comes next, we'd love your feedback.

Even if your family never made it out this year, your input would help.

What worked?
What sounds interesting?
What would make Cannon Castle more helpful for your child or teen next school year?

Fill out the short form here:

https://cannoncastle.com/stay-connected/

You can also follow this page for updates as we plan what comes next.

Thank you for helping us build this one step at a time.

This is what learning can look like.

Mr. Mike donated more magnets to our collection, and one of our teens used them to build this shape.

It's called a truncated octahedron.

It has 6 square faces and 8 hexagonal faces.

(I had to look that one up.)

Play turned into geometry.
Building turned into discovery.
A donated bag of magnets turned into a new thing learned.

Thank you, Mr. Mike!

There must be big plans for this drawing.

One of the tallest LEGO towers we've seen at Bricks & Battles.

It started as a pile of bricks...

then became a challenge:

"Can I build it higher than I can reach?"

That’s what we love seeing each week.

Kids building. Testing ideas. Solving problems. And turning play into learning.

Math makes more sense when you can see it.

Today we used the Montessori Stamp Game to practice place value and carrying.

Instead of just memorizing steps on paper, players can physically trade 10 ones for 1 ten, 10 tens for 1 hundred, and 10 hundreds for 1 thousand.

That little "carry the 1" step starts to make sense because they can see what is happening.

This is what we're building with Level Up: Math Skills.

Less guessing.
More understanding.
More confidence with numbers.

Never thought I would see the day that all 15 cats would be stacked on one.

If at first
you don't succeed,
try, try, again.

Normally you stack a Jenga tower 3 blocks at a time.

Someone wanted to know what would happen if you used 5 per layer.

Things got interesting.