Happy New Year!

2011 went by in a crazy fast way.  As 2012 sneaks up on us, I pray that each of you have a fantabulous New Year filled with God’s favor and blessing.  May this be the best homeschooling year ever!

Christmas Tidbits

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas with their families!!  It’s amazing how we prepare for weeks (or even months) and then suddenly the day has come and gone.  Hopefully the true meaning of Christmas, the birth of Christ, stays with us a lot longer!

Here are a few highlights of our Christmas week.   The girls and I spent most of the early mornings last week baking cookies and making candies.   By December 24th we were in full “Elf” mode as we delivered goodies to friends, family and a few strangers.   To see more photos, check out my post at S.A.H.M. I Am!

Here are a few high lights.

Our traditional Christmas breakfast, eggnog French toast with warm cherry pie filling on top.  Yummie!

Yes, Nutcrackers!

We have all had a blast playing with the themed Legos.  They make little log cabins.

Lindsey was thrilled to get her blue guitar (the fact that it had Cinderella on it was an added bonus).

Um, yeah, that’s Olivia in her absolute FAVORITE gift.  Her raccoon hat, a-la Davey Crockett.   I know she’ll be wearing this out in public, and I’ll just have to act like I’m ok with that.

It was a great Christmas!  We had yet another life altering experience take place during the festivities.  That however is a whole post in and of itself.

Weekly Wrap Up–The “Last Week”

When I say the “last week”, I don’t mean we’ve quit homeschooling or that I’m predicting the end of the world.   I mean, we finished the LAST commitment for the year!!  Nowhere to be (other than work) until January!!! 

Nutcracker was fantabulous!!  Doing 3 performances in 2 days wore everyone out, but it was a great show.   You can check out photos of my little ones in costume here.

We had our final Activity Day of the year.  Laura Ingalls Wilder was our lady of topic, and we made scarflets for Christmas.

We finished piano lessons and Awana for the year as well!  Woot!!

All of our lessons have been pretty basic this week.  Nothing particularly interesting.   Lindsey has become a reading machine!!   She lays in bed at night and reads herself to sleep.   Olivia is reading Gulliver’s Travels this week.

We’ll be pretty low key on academics from now until January 3.  Mostly focusing on math, reading, writing and Bible.  So I hope my wraps ups aren’t too boring until then!

Be sure to check out the Weekly Wrap Up this week!

Activity Day–Laura Ingalls Wilder

This month in Activity Day, we focused on Laura Ingalls Wilder.   Being December, I wanted to go with something Christmas like, so we focused mainly on the stories of the Ingalls’ Christmases.  I did however use the Laura Ingalls Wilder Card Set from Currclick to show the girls what the real Ingalls and Wilders looked like.

Books we used:

Santa Comes to Little House; by Laura Ingalls Wilder
A Little House Christmas; by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Since gifts weren’t store bought back then, I decided to do some crafting.  We used knitted scarves ($1 at the Dollar Tree), tied the ends of the fringes together, then sewed on some buttons and looped the fringe loops over the buttons to make a nice secure muffler.   Here are the directions if you’d like to make one yourself.

The girls came up with interesting variations on how to wear their scarves.

We also made foam Christmas trees for the girls to take home.

To wrap things up, I gave each girl a gift bag with a cup, a peppermint stick, a gold coin (chocolate) and a little ring.  Similar to Laura’s Christmas when Mr. Edwards crossed the river to bring them a tin cup, peppermint stick and a heart shaped cake.

My Memories–Freebie of the Week

This weeks freebie download can be found here.

If you haven’t purchased the My Memories software you can do so by clicking here.  Then, use my special code  STMMMS5881 to save $10 off the price

A Taste Of Nutcracker

I know you’re all probably tired of the word Nutcracker…believe me, I’m glad we’re wrapping up too!!   However, I thought you might like to at least see the girls in their costumes…these were taken backstage in a hurry between scenes, so don’t critique my photo skills okay?

Olivia, my baker and mouse.

Lindsey, my sweet little Gingersnap.

Weekly Wrap Up–Stage Week

This has been one of the busiest weeks ever!!  The girls have had stage rehearsal every night this week (never at the same time, that would be too easy for me!  Olivia has been at practice for at least 3 hours each night, sometimes more.  Luckily Lindsey’s part is much smaller and practices have been shorter for her.  Still, between the 3 of us we logged in over 22 hours of Nutcracker practices just this week.   Now on to the show!

Reading:  Olivia finished reading Pollyanna and started on Gulliver’s Travels.  Lindsey is reading everything in sight!

Math:  Lindsey started counting by 50’s and telling time to 45 minutes.   Olivia went deeper into Roman numerals and also measurement equations.

Writing:  Olivia is still working through her Cursive Writing Skillbook from Abeka.  Lindsey is working on sentence structure and punctuation.

We typically study Christmas celebrations from other countries during this time.  However it didn’t happen this week.   We did surprise our neighbor with her gingerbread cookies and homemade cards for St. Nicholas Day (December 6).   It’s so much fun to see her get so excited about something so simple, but it reminds her of her childhood in Luxembourg.

Seriously, that’s pretty much it for the week.   I put in 54 hours at work this night (3rd shift).  Between that and all the Nutcracker practices I didn’t have the time or energy to do any great in depth studies.

Be sure to check out the Weekly Wrap Up!

My Memories–Freebie of the Week

This weeks free download is very girly in a Punky Brewster sort of way!   Get your free download here.

If you haven’t purchased the My Memories software you can do so by clicking here.  Then, use my special code  STMMMS5881 to save $10 off the price

Weekly Wrap Up–Half Way There

 

This week marked our half way point for our school year, only 85 more days to go!   This has been another light academic week due to the crazy schedule of extra curricular activities for the girls in the evenings, and my 50+ hour work week. 

Nutcracker practices have dominated every evening.  On Monday Olivia had practice, followed by a pizza party and then all the soldiers and mice marched in the city Christmas Parade.   (I ended up walking the parade route as well, helping to keep mice from scurrying into the crowd of thousands.)  Here are some photos of before, during and after the parade.   So, can you pick out Olivia in the group below?  No?  In that case she’s the in the front row, far right.

Writing:   Olivia finished her Level 3 Writing Strands book.   I haven’t decided yet it we’ll start Level 4 this year or if we’ll revisit Level 3 over the summer.  Lindsey’s hand writing has suddenly become very mature looking!

Math:  Lindsey is working with counting by 50’s and learning about half dollars.  I swear Olivia’s 3rd grade math book has more pre-algebra in it than I ever took in high school.  This week she learned about measurement problems.

Reading:  Olivia is reading through Pollyanna and Lindsey is working her way through her readers.

If you missed my Thanksgiving Week Wrap Up last week, you may want to go back and check it out.  We had some cute things going on.

Then swing over to this weeks Weekly Wrap Up.