Weekly Wrap-Up: In Which We Wrap Things Up

Homeschool:  This was our last week of school before the Christmas break, or at least the last week that I had scheduled for school  Monday morning is our late start day, and this weeek it was a later start than usual with Kennady sleeping in quite late.  The boys did get some schoolwork done in the morning, and then after lunch, I took Kennady and Landon on a field trip to a bakery.  They learned a little about how the bakery operates, and each student decorated cookies and cupcakes to take home.  After the tour, we ran several errands before getting home.

Tuesday evening I attended the homeschool fellowship group's Encouragement Meeting, and our discussion topic was English and Language Arts curriculum.  Several of us shared what we were using and what was working for us, and we had a veteran homeschool mom/English teacher join us and give us her recommendations as well.  I wrote down several titles of resources to look for and possibly add to our collection.

Science is completely finished for first semester!

I've been working on getting the grading completely up to date, and adjusting the assignment schedules. Originally we had planned on staying home over Christmas, so we would have done a little bit of schoolwork over the next two weeks.  Now that we will be away for about a week, I decided to push up some assignment due dates and tweak our school calendar to reflect that.  No sense in having assignments show up as overdue when we aren't even home to work on them!  We are definitely not taking schoolwork along with us either!  We did set some consequences for not meeting the deadlines for work due this week though.

Kennady has not been having an easy time with Math - she is slow in memorizing many of her math facts, and often I feel like she must be forgetting what she learns from one day to the next!  it's not coming easily to her, that's for sure.  We are working on memorizing multiplication tables, and I have some rhymes to help her with that because she certainly learns music easily.  Recently I picked up a book from the library, The I Hate Mathematics! Book by Marilyn Burns, and she has been reading it enthusiastically.  It is what she chooses for bedtime reading most nights!  The book uses a comic book narrative, with silly stories and jokes and games to teach math concepts.  She's entertained by it, and the ideas is to give her a visual and storyline background in math, rather than just numbers and formulas.  I hope it will help.

Friday morning we finished up a few things in school, then went to the last gym class for the semester.  I've decided that we will not do gym class for spring semester.  some mixed feelings about it, and I may regret it later, but this is the year I am going to try it.

In Other News:   Monday and Tuesday were both errand days.  In addition to the bakery tour on Monday, I had to place an order for Christmas gifts, pick up a pair of shoes I'd had repaired, and visit a friend to get my hair trimmed.  Tuesday I took Kennady and Landon with me again, and we visited the library, the grocery, the post office, ordered new tires for the van, and picked up our half hog from the butcher.  Whew! Busy day.

On Wednesday morning the vet came by and checked out the kitten, de-wormed him and gave him vaccinations.  We found a vet that makes house calls, how cool is that!? 8-D

The snow started up again on Thursday, while I was at the library stocking up on reading material, and taking a bit of time to update my blogs.  I had been planning to go to the Secret Sister reveal party at church that evening,  but it was cancelled because of the snow.

There was a christmas cookie exchange on Friday at gym class.  I took Kicked Up Molasses Cookies and got some very yummy things in exchange!  I took all the kids with me to pick up Harrison and what an ordeal!  The traffic was awful and we didn't get back home till very late.  But at least the weather and driving conditions were okay!

On Sunday evening we met at church to go caroling through the neighborhood, the old-fashioned way of going door-to-door.  And when I say "neighborhood", what I mean is that we went to the houses down the short stretch of highway where the church sits, because it's hardly even a town - just a collection of house clustered around the post office.  So it was a little unusual for a group of 50 or so to be walking about singing Christmas carols at any house that appeared to have someone at home.  We were received quite positively!  Afterwards we went back to the youth center to have hot drinks and cookies.

My Christmas cards and letters are finally completed and mailed!  Seems I finish that job later every year, despite all my best intentions.

On the Bookshelf:

• The Prophet by Francine Rivers


• The Secret Confessions of Anne Shakespeare by Arliss Ryan (I think I may give up on this one soon - I liked the idea, but it hasn't really held my attention)


• The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory


• A Christmas Odyssey by Anne Perry

Reviewed The Christmas Chronicles (which I read last week) and Feed Your Family for $12.oo a Day.  Finished, and about to review, Duty and Desire.

Parting Shot:

will return in 2011. ;-)

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