A Fly On My Homeschool Wall

We took the week off school to prepare for Thanksgiving.  Each day we still had morning devotional, personal scripture study, and evening family scriptures and prayers.  On Sunday through Wednesday and then again on Saturday we had family evening read-aloud time.  Other than that we cooked.  I'd thought we'd so some crafting, too, but we didn't.  Monday We planned, shopped, and made strawberry freezer jam and cranberry sauce. Mashing strawberries Stirring cranberry sauce.  She said, "This is easy, but it's taking forever!" I3 helps stir the berries, pectin, and sugar together. Bottling up the final product   Tuesday We made pie crusts, gingersnaps, a cheesecake, and cranberry bread. The four oldest get their first pastry-making lesson. Learning that pastry takes a "light touch" Completed pie dough disks--ready to refrigerate until tomorrow Cranberries are wiggly things--prone to escape the knife blade! ...

The promised snow never came.  We made it to all of our church meetings all weekend long. Then I crashed. Monday We started the week on a sour note.  I was still so tired from the weekend that even the simplest routines seemed like mountains to climb.  The kids were ornery, too.  We had tears over school and bad attitudes over helping.  Somehow we did all of the chores, all of the school assignments, saw Dad off to work, and made it to bed a little bit early. Tuesday  The second day of the week was better.  Perhaps the early-to-bed was what we needed--perhaps it was my fervent prayers--because it was a whole different household on Tuesday.  Smiles, kind words, and helping hands came back.  J is for Jellyfish.  We watched a video online about jellyfish, then we made this jellyfish craft. I3 was kind enough to let A7 and H5 join him in his "Little Kid School"  The subject of jellyfish was so interesting to them that t...