Return to Normal

(OK, well, as normal as I usually am!)

My headache was finally gone this morning, so we returned to our regular routine. I'm having a hard time concentrating on school as Christmas break gets closer and closer...I swear, time has sloooooowed to a craaawwwwlllll! But we did a "reading packet" this morning (from Scholastic Phonics) and then some math facts flash cards. I also read another chapter in a book that we're reading called "A Frontier Christmas", so hopefully we'll have another page to add to the book that we're making.

I had Bear write a "paper" on "What I Like About Winter". She wrote, "I like giving gifts on Christmas. I like having snowball fights." Unfortunately, I can't find the actual paper that she wrote it on! One thing I love about doing writing assignments like that is the mini-lessons that it leads to - like how you drop the "e" at the end of "give" and "have" when you add -ing! This isn't something that I would have thought to just teach her outright, but I know that it will stick in there and resurface when it needs to. We also made some Christmas decorations to take up to our friend Myra who will be in the hospital on Christmas. We made some hanging Christmas trees and a looooong paper chain, and the The Kids decorated a couple of bookmarks for her. We took the decorations up after lunch and spent a little time there, talking to her.

I'm not really sure how much school will get done tomorrow. We are having a Homeschooling Christmas Party on Friday with three other families who homeschool, and I've got some things I need to pick up for that. We're going to decorate sugar cookies, so I've got to get cookies, icing, and sprinkles, and all of the kids are doing a "gift exchange" so we need to go to the dollar store and pick up two gifts. I'm planning on doing at least another reading packet and finishing the Christmas book. After that, who knows?