Merry Christmas

Some pictures of all our Christmas celebrations:

We celebrated with the Kregers first:

Then we had a few days to do some Christmas activities like baking, driving around to look at lights and a visit to the library for books to enjoy over break.

The library puppet theater:

Christmas Eve, we made pizzas:

  And gingerbread houses:

The kids got new Christmas pajamas, like usual:

Christmas morning joy!

Nathan's giant penguin kept him warm that night:

Finally, we ended with the PJ Christmas:

We had a lot of fun, a lot of presents and a lot of food!!!  It was a fun time but I'm ready to move on to the New Year!

Week 17

We did get some school done last week--no sick days, believe it or not.  We took most of Thursday off for our homeschool supervising teacher's visit but otherwise, we finished up and wrapped up and were set to start our break!  

Not a great picture but here's Samuel reading some monkey/banana pairs to finish his All About Reading lesson:

Hunter and Lily wrapping up the noun unit we've been working on:

And, we finished "attentiveness" by focusing on birds.  We learned about the parts of an egg, which has made me unable to eat them:

We also dissected owl pellets and you can see how excited they were!!

We found a ton of mouse skulls in our pellets and there were other mouse bones we sorted:

We are now enjoying all things Christmas!

Week 16

Nathan had a penguin study this week.  However, he was not into this craft below so Hunter let me trace his hand instead and Lily modeled it.  :)

Nathan did love his penguin bin and the winter play dough we made this week!

He also enjoyed the magnet page!  He is done with "school" until after Christmas now.  He still has the penguin bin and play dough and Christmas books to occupy him, though.

For Konos this week, we finished up predator/prey with a life cycle game and then we did a quick study on Native Americans.  We did a lot of fun activities, including totem poles:

On Friday, we took a field trip the natural history museum close by:

There was a whole section on Native Americans in Iowa so that was perfect for our current study:

Nathan found some penguin/puffin birds that excited him:

The mammal hall was the most exciting.  Here is Hunter checking out the whale skeleton:

We had some more illness this week but in between fevers and stomach flus, we had a chance to bake Christmas cookies.  It's an all day effort!

I think everyone was happy with their decorations--they certainly were very careful this year unlike years past where they just dumped sprinkles on.  We have one more week of school and then we are on break--so exciting!

Week 15

This week will forever be known as "sickness week".  It was a rough week to accomplish school.  Fevers, headaches and now coughing has invaded the house.  We pushed a lot of school off to next week so I'll be combining and adjusting as we near Christmas break!

Nathan finished the letter J this week, even though he only had "school" 3 days this week.  We are done with letters until after break so we'll be doing fun Christmas-y things.

His jellyfish:

Jello exploration:

Samuel had 4 days of "school" this week, due to illness.  He did great, though!

Hunter started a new book for the month: Santa Claus Doesn't Mop Floors.

Lily showing off our Konos work this week.  We discussed the differences between herbivore, carnivores and omnivores.  We have to continue our predator/prey week on Monday.

Lily challenged me to Yahtzee this week, showing Grandma Hill's influence!!  :)

 Nathan was recovering from a high fever this day.  He seems to have skipped the coughing portion of this illness.

And, last weekend, the kids got out with Brian to try squirrel hunting.  No animals were injured, though.  They did get worn out from the experience, though.

2 more weeks of school!!!

Week 14

Thanksgiving week!  We had 2 days of school to finish up and catch up some things.  Nathan did a Thanksgiving grocery shop game and that was it for him!!

The other kids did some Oregon Trail activities to finish up our week of expeditions.  We are doing school at TV trays now because we removed the homeschool table for the Christmas tree.  :)

Lily went to see The Nutcracker, a great start to Christmas season.

Nathan helped make a Weight Watcher recipe for peppermint brownies--early Christmas baking!

The Christmas train came out and it's a huge hit with the boys.  They keep setting up and re-setting up the track however they like.  

The kids set up their own trees:

We set up the tree on the porch:

And we set up our big tree inside:

3 more weeks of school and then Christmas break!!

Week 13

Nathan had a Thanksgiving-themed week and he was totally confused to NOT have a letter focus.  Ha!  He didn't seem to think it was as important. :)  We made a pinecone turkey and his has 3 eyes...

We made turkey feathers fly in the parachute--too cold to do this outside!

We made pumpkin spice playdough.  We used the recipe that was in the packet I had and it was NOT as good.  It was very sticky and we threw it away after one day.  But, the kids loved it!

Samuel worked on some turkey math and reading.

I got up at 7:00 one morning and found Hunter at the kitchen table, working away on his schoolwork for the day.  This is the nice thing about the kids having assignment notebooks.  I write all their work in for the week and then they are responsible for getting it done each day.  Hunter likes to do his early and be done.  Lily often works ahead so she doesn't have handwriting, for example, each day.

In Konos, we studied attentiveness by focusing on maps, mountain men and animal tracks.  We had a lot of fun exploring library books on these topics.  We'll actually continue this study on Monday.  The kids had a map-themed mystery to solve here:

This is their camouflage pictures.  I thought they turned out really well.  They were all given an animal and had to create a scene to camouflage them.  Hunter had the deer, Samuel the lion, Lily the lizard and Nathan the butterfly. 

We have a couple days of catch up and wrap up work but they will be short school days.  Then we are off for Thanksgiving break.  :)