Homeschool Mother's Journal: In Which We Feel Rather Festive

Technical difficulties have delayed this post.  *sigh*

In our homeschool this week... I think we're getting back to a routine, although I still haven't done any Social Studies with Landon and Kennady.  This coming week, we WILL.  We have to, or I will be so embarrassed!  My favorite subject to teach, and I've been neglecting it.  Well... these things happen... and fortunately we can be flexible.  We did finish our Science unit on aquatic ecosystems, which I was going to give a blog post all its own, but as usual, I didn't get to it.  This week we compared how salt water and fresh water freeze - or don't freeze, as the case may be...



We saw for ourselves that while fresh water was starting to form ice at about 32*F, salt water did not form any ice, even at around 26*F.  We also saw that once the ice had formed on top of the freshwater, it acted as an insulator (we were very careful about putting our thermometer into the same hole in the ice each time we checked), and the water underneath stayed at about 33 to 35 degrees.  The saltwater continued to get colder each time we checked the temperature, but had not yet formed ice after an hour.

We also returned to our composer study this week, learning about Ludwig van Beethoven and enjoying his music.

Maybe it was just me, but I thought Math and Language Arts went quite well this week, and as far as I know, Spencer is doing a decent job of staying on schedule with all his schoolwork.  (However, I am behind on grading...)

Friday morning was the Christmas Craft Breakfast with our homeschool fellowship group.  This annual event is one of the great highlights of our school year.







In other news... We celebrated DH's birthday on Sunday with his favorite dessert - Chocolate Cheesecake.



The Christmas concerts for my choir were on Monday and Tuesday - both went very well.  Kennady came to the Monday night concert and went out with all of us for coffee and dessert afterwards.  Thursday night was rehearsal for the Big Band Merry Christmas concert, and the concert itself was on Saturday evening.  Just one choir event left for the season!

Kennady had her last rehearsals for the kids Christmas play at church.  Performances will be this week.  Should be cute!

Sunday evening we had the Christmas carolling and tree-lighting event at church.  I decided not to walk with the carollers because of my knee, but they did have a very good turnout and the weather was perfect for it.

And on Friday afternoon I took Landon to order new glasses - it was past time!

You can see pictures from our vacation at "Just A Second"  - the first two batches of pictures are posted - A Deep Creek PhotoJournal,  and A Blackwater Falls PhotoJournal.  One more set of photos to go!

My favorite thing this week was... the Christmas Craft Breakfast!

A photo, video, link, or quote to share...

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On the Bookshelf...

• Already Compromised by Greg Hall and Ken Ham with Britt Beemer


• Educating the Whole Hearted Child by Clay Clarkson with Sally Clarkson


• Taliesin by Stephen R Lawhead


• Beethoven: His Life & Times by Jeremy Siepmann

A Parting Shot:



This post is linked to The Homeschool Chick - see how other homeschoolers are keeping up during the holidays!