Castle made out of a cardboard furniture box, scissors, zip ties, duct tape and paint
...here's the back
Here are the finished products of all my days painting....
sleighs and riders
Rainbow peg people and their minis
Rainbow bean pots, with matching acorn tops and spools
bird tree with birds
cardboard doll bed with crocheted doll blanket
my friend Kim made this gorgeous unicorn
crocheted bee hive with bees and crocheted basket with ladybugs
We were *so* proud of ourselves for whipping all of this together, with only a few minor items to be repaired at the last minute. As a matter of fact, we were much more organized this year for the holidays than in year's past - except that we did not get holiday cards into the mail. I think time just really got away from us, but at the end of the day, I figure that having everything ready to go without adding any further stress onto the schedule was a huge blessing.
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On the homeschooling front: I ordered Story of The World Vol II (Middle Ages) on audiobook, and we've already listened to the first chapter on Rome. The stories are fairly short (maybe even a little too much so), so just long enough for even the quickest ride to the store in the car. It looks as though I'll need to do further study into these chapters because so far they seem to really just give a bare-bones intro and then quickly move onto the next thing. I do appreciate that on one level, because it keeps the kids' interest and the short length of the stories allows for a good negotiation ("If you listen to this 10 minute story, we'll listen to music for the rest of the ride")
I'm planning to keep some notes on the chapters, so with any luck some of those may make it into this blog. That's assuming I organize myself to do that lol We'll see how it goes.
In other homeschooling updates: the Minecraft Homeschool class came to a close and we've already signed up for the next session, which begins in a couple of weeks. We are getting a lot out of these classes, and learning more about Minecraft along the way.
We've taken a bit of a break from other lessonwork, but of course as anyone who has kids who learn at home, you know that learning is happening all the time. My son, for example, has been sending his father and I messages on facebook - which is helping him to practice typing, writing and spelling. We often find real-world ways to slip math into our week ("Hey, if it is 7:00pm, how long until Daddy gets home?" or "Hey, if it is 2C, what is the temperature in Fahrenheit?" - we love to guess the conversion while we're in our car, which will tell you the temp in both measurements).
We've purposely kept things relaxed and low key this month, since we've been spending so much time doing holiday-related activities, making gifts, etc. It was a good time, then, to introduce The Story of The World, since we could just focus on that, and only in short bursts to boot.
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In other news, we just had another visitor from Australia here for 3 weeks, and then we'll have yet another one here sometime in January. I have to admit that it will be good to have the house fully back to ourselves at the end of this last visit. We've got *SO* much to do to get ready for the big move, and the last thing I want to worry about is entertaining guests. So, one more push....
Happy Holidays to One and All
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