Skip to main content

The Weekly Wrap-up: The Week Where We Can't Focus On Anything But Christmas




Did I already say we're having trouble focusing on school around here? Yep, it happens every year about this time.

Each year I tell myself we're going to do school until the week before Christmas and then December hits and it's just c.r.a.z.y. There's all of the decorations and the music and the holiday movies and nobody wants to think about schoolwork. Not even me:) And for some reason we've all just been so tired and moving slowly in the mornings this week, it's like our bodies are trying to go into hibernation or something.

So I very wisely didn't try to fight it. We sort of *unschooled* this week instead. I was kind of subversive about their learning..heehee

Some of the things we did were:


1. have a *Toss & Tally* tournament


2. do some math drill sheet using our cool new dry erase crayons (they love any excuse to use these!). My daughter actually proclaimed one day "I just love school, especially math!" WHAAA??? Where was my voice recorder when I needed it?!? I would so love to play that back to her day after day:)


3. begin our Jesse tree devotionals--those are just SO good! I tear up nearly every day reading them.


4. tend to our herbs in our light box for our botany study. They are really coming along! Although I want to know if you can tell what is wrong with this picture--leave me a comment if you can!


5. practice kitchen math by making our first batch of Christmas cookies. Yum-O!


6. reading, lots of reading! We are, of course, enjoying our nightly readings in The Advent Book. That is one of our favorite traditions around here. We're also currently reading through The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

7. did a little science experiment using Mr. B's Ultimate Crystal Growing Kit. The results are still in the process, I'll keep you posted:)

8. hung out with our homeschool group for a holiday movie, cookies and cocoa.


So you can see it was a very laid-back week around here. You know how hectic this time of the year gets, so I was glad to have a little extra time to get caught up around the house.

More unschooling is planned for next week!


Popular posts from this blog

The Making of an Egyptian Death Mask

We are learning all about the ancient world this year with Story of the World I and loving it! We've been learning a lot about Egypt, of course, which is completely fascinating. Most recently we have studied the New Kingdom of Egypt, which includes the story of King Tut. So we decided making an Egyptian death mask in the style of King Tut's would be a fun project. First since it was too cold at the time to paper mache in the garage (it probably would have frozen instead of dried-ha) and it was too messy to do it in the house, we decided to pick up a couple of cheap craft masks at Hobby Lobby. Next we cut out cardboard shapes to complete the shape of the death mask, attaching them with hot glue. Vince even put a little detail on the *beard* with the hot glue per The Princess' request. Then the kiddos started to paint them with this metallic gold tempera paint. It worked okay for the cardboard, but would not coat the plastic of the mask. We thought maybe a second coat ...

Door Hanger Chore Charts

My kids have had a chore chart for a while.  It's one of those magnetic boards and they share it.  However, it's not by their rooms and often they (and I) forget to update it.  Plus it's a little bulky.   When I saw the concept of a door hanger chore chart on Pinterest, I loved it!  It was compact, right there were the kiddos could see it coming out and going into their rooms, and it costs almost nothing to make.   I headed over to one of my favorite stores: Hobby Lobby, of course.  They  have these little wooden door hangers for .79.  I also grabbed a couple of packets of decorative buttons for $1.99 each.  I already had the clothes pins and the paint so those cost me nothing.   I began by painting the door hangers (I used tempera paints because that's what I had).  Then I grabbed a fine point Sharpie and the clothes pins and started writing chores on them, making sure to write them correctly so they will ...

Making Notebooks

Recently I tried out a new craft idea~and it was SO much fun!! And extremely frugal, too. That's always a bonus, right? So here we go: 1. Take your basic composition notebook (purchased at the back-to-school sales for .99 each). 2. Go to your craft supplies and get your Mod Podge ready, along with a good paintbrush. 3. Look through all those scrapbook papers you've been randomly collecting and choose some. 3. After choosing your paper for the cover of your book and trimming it to fit, start *painting* the cover with the glue. Next, give the back of your paper a good coat of glue, too. (I left the binding uncovered so that I could use a contrasting paper there later on). 4. Glue it on! Remember to smooth out any air bubbles under the paper. 5. Flip the cover open and make a few cuts on the corners so that they will fold over nice and neat, then add a little more glue to the edges of the inside cover and a little more to the paper edges. 6. Fold them over and press...