I can hardly believe the first semester of this school year is coming to a close, but I think I say that every year around this time! The days are long, but the years are surely flying by. Here is what we were up to in the month of December:

Bible

When I asked the girls what they wanted to read for December, they both wanted to read The Jesse Tree again. I love how it tells the story of the coming Messiah beginning with Genesis. Our December Memory Verse was John 14:6. I’ve been thinking about a way to continuously review the Memory Verses we have learned. I think I am going to cycle through the past 3 years of Memory Verses we have learned so that we can really know them well.

I read The Donkey in the Living Room to Sarge and Beau this year. I didn’t wrap the pieces like the book suggests, but I will do that another year when they are a bit older! Sarge is at the age where he could understand the Christmas Story this year so we talked a lot about that and read the story many times throughout December.

Math

Little Bug started LU203 this month. She made a comment recently about how she is so glad that math isn’t hard anymore. Thank you, CLE!

After Sweet Pea told me that KII was too easy, I decided to find her a math book to work through before we begin CLE Level 1 next year. Someone in our CC Community brought Math Lessons for a Living Education and I thumbed through it and thought it would be a good fit for Sweet Pea. It has a lot of number writing practice which Sweet Pea needs.

Language Arts

Little Bug started Book 6 of the Explode the Code series. ETC continues to be a great reinforcement of phonics and spelling. We continue to work through All About Spelling Level 2 and Progeny Press Study Guide for Little House on the Prairie.

This is the English Grammar Notebook that I made to help us review and learn all 3 cycles of English Grammar Memory Work. The first tab is for Cycle 3’s Memory Work that we are currently learning. Then I have tabs for Monday-Friday that I file Memory Work we have already learned to be reviewed on a weekly basis. The last tab is Memory Work from the other two cycles that we need to learn as well. This system is working well and it is my goal to have all 3 cycle’s of Memory Work memorized by the time Little Bug starts Essentials!

Sweet Pea is working through the primers for Explode the Code. She just started working on this during independent work time. She also writes numbers every day and counts to 100 as we continue to work on Number Sense.

Classical Conversations

We’ve been working on reviewing states and capitals. Little Bug was able to take the blackline USA map and go through the entire map naming all the states and capitals!

Outside Play

After our morning school time, the kids all go outside for about an hour to play before it’s lunchtime!

History

The Story of the Statue of Liberty was the perfect book to read to the girls to learn about the Statue of Liberty.

We spent some time learning about the time of slavery and the Civil War. Pink and Say by Patricia Polocco nearly brought me to tears at the end!  We learned about several inventions (telephone & flight). From there we learned about immigration and the tragic maiden voyage of the Titanic.

Tot School

Sarge spends close to 1.5 hours playing contentedly in his bedroom while we are doing school in the morning. She plays with Matchbox cars, train table, magnatiles and duplo blocks. While he plays he listens to music. When the timer goes off, we clean up his bedroom and then it is outside time. While I don’t have an official “learning time” in our schedule for the boys, we do Learning Time whenever it fits! Beau enjoys playing with puzzle pieces. I introduced Sarge to play-doh!

We are nearly finished with all of the Letter A activities.

Christmas

We've watched our favorite Christmas movies!

Some members of the family participated in Advent on December 3rd. Little Bug did a phenomenal job reading her part.

Dave and I enjoyed Maria's annual Christmas party on December 2nd. It was a pajama party!

The girls made a Gingerbread House with Grams!

On Christmas Eve morning I had a sweet worship service at home with the 4 children. Dave had to play at the church service at 10:30am. I thought about going and taking all the kids, but that wasn't what David needed. I am so glad I stayed home with the kids, as we had such a wonderful time together reading the Christmas story, singing Christmas Carols and then I did some Christmas crafts with the girls.

On Christmas Eve, we walked the neighborhood looking at lights!

Annual Christmas Eve pictures!

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

- Elaine