Homeschool Mother's Journal: In Which We Prepare for the Holidays

In our homeschool this week... The goal this week was to get everything caught up so we could go on a Christmas vacation with clear consciences and without a pile of overdue assignments waiting for us when we get home.  As far as I can tell now (before doing the grading), we've succeeded, with the possible exception of some drawings that Spencer might need to do for Art.  That is something that is easy to take along though.

Kennady and Landon finished the current Science unit on extreme biomes - we studied oases, mountains, chaparral, and caves this week! We covered a lot of ground.

I had hoped to get a little further with Social Studies, but was satisfied with what we accomplished.  We studied the Middle Ages and they sketched a castle and a hawk's head (because hunting with hawks or falcons was a popular pastime during that period).  They also sketched coats of arms - we didn't follow any of the rules of heraldry, just drew designs that we thought looked interesting.







Our composer study continued with an overview of the Romantic era, and the first part of our study of Tchaikovsky.

In other news... this week was a bit more relaxed in that we had relatively few places to go and errands to run.  The final performance of the kids Christmas play at church was on Sunday night.



We finished our Christmas shopping, with just a few exceptions.  DH took another vacation day on Friday, so he and I spent the day shopping and we met with some old friends to do a little holiday visiting.  Today we are doing our best to do the last minute tidying up and preparation for our vacation.

My favorite thing this week was... Christmas music of all kinds.

What's working/not working for us... after some more trial and error, we think/hope that we have the computer issues solved.   Sadly, I've come to the conclusion that HSB may not be working for me, so I am planning on migrating my blogs after Christmas.

Questions/thoughts I have... How will I get everything done that week between Christmas and New Years?!?!  I have a LOT on the agenda for that time period.  Hopefully it will go smoothly...

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

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This made me smile!

On the Bookshelf...

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


• Merlin by Stephen R. Lawhead


• Beethoven: His Life & Times by Jeremy Siepmann


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

I am still behind with my posts on Kym's Bookcase! That's something that will need to wait until after the holidays.

A Parting Shot...



This post is linked to The Homeschool Chick - see how other families are getting ready for the holidays!