Christmas is coming!

Over the holidays, I plan to update my blog on all we have been doing with school.  My camera lenses died, and blog posts are no fun without pictures!  As a birthday/Christmas (and maybe Valentine's Day/Mother's Day/Anniversary gift), I got a new lens.  Yea!!!!  Pix of projects are coming soon!  Here's a quick note about what we are going to be doing this holiday season.  First, we are taking a break in the MFW-ECC curriculum to look at Christmas Around the World.  We are also doing the Truth in the Tinsel book.  Secondly, as cute as my friend's elf on the shelf pictures are, I have enough mischief in my life without creating extra, and I know my kids well enough to know that if it's cute for the elf to do it, they would try it too!  As a giving focused alternative, I am planning to combine the Christmas Angel with Light 'em Up activities.  :)  I plan to post some of these as we go.  Since tomorrow is Dec. 1, I read the Christmas Angel book tonight, and I am making plans.  What do you do in your house to keep your kids focused on Christ at Christmas?

And, while 52 weeks of cookies was cancelled by our household running guru, I will be making cookies through the holidays, and I'll post the recipes.  :)

First Day of First Grade?

Smiley's Scroll Alphabet page A-F

 

 Well, we are officially out for the summer, and have been for a couple of weeks.  I give the kids a couple of weeks truly "off" where they can sleep late, and do whatever (within reason) they want all day.  By the end of the second week when wake-up is around 10 am, lunch around 2:30 pm, and bedtime is after 10 pm, we're  ALL crazy!  So, we begin our summer schedule of getting up at a reasonable time (6:30, anyone?), which leads to a reasonable bedtime, and a sane Mom!  There are not a lot of kids in our neighborhood, so it doesn't feel much different, and BruCrewDad works year round, and heads to the gym before 5 am each morning, so early to rise, early to bed works better for our family.  (I know the saying is early to bed, early to rise, but that doesn't work in our house.)  The Bru Crew does NOT go to bed early unless I wake them up fairly early and keep them busy all day, thus, we continue working on the 3 R's during summer break.  Yesterday was our first day back in the saddle, and it wasn't pretty.  Lots of meltdowns, and a math page that took two hours.  :o(  After lunch, I busted out the new books so I could organize it all while I still remembered what I bought and why.  ;)  Smiley looked at some of it with great interest!  She finished what I required of her quite quickly today, then begged to start her new stuff.  What was I to say?  "No.  You have to wait until August to learn this new stuff you're excited about." 

Can you see why we call her Smiley?

Practicing writing Aa, Bb, Cc

   By then, she won't be excited!  So, Smiley started first grade today.  ;) We talked about how the Bible was written on scrolls, and looked online at images of the Dead Sea Scrolls.  Then, she wrote her letters for practice, then beginning sounds as I dictated words.  This was all after she had already done a page in Math U See, and a handwriting page.On a side note, I had a brilliant idea today.  This fall, we are doing My Father's World-Exploring Countries and Cultures (ECC).  Since we will be studying cultures around the world, I wanted to also cover Christmas around the World, but Christmas is crazy, and I'll be honest, we don't get much done between Thanksgiving and New Year's.  So, when I saw a facebook post about Christmas in July, I thought, that's perfect!  We can do Christmas around the World in July!  Then, we have our appetites wet for ECC without the stress of a full blown project in December!  We can make Christmas passports, Christmas goodies from around the world, and end with a party!  Won't that be fun?