A Fly On My Homeschool Wall

On Sunday we went to church, played Uno for family night, and then watched Return of the Jedi while we ate popcorn. On Monday Sir Walter Scott took the youngest 7 to the zoo while the older girls and I cleaned and shopped and prepped for our Christmas Eve that evening (Sir Walter Scott worked Christmas day, so we celebrated a day early). The zoo highlight was watching juvenile oryxes play fight with their emerging horns. We had our family Nativity reenactment, ate cookies, and put out stockings.  Sir Walter Scott and I had fun playing "The Santa Game" before falling into bed. So excited to be shepherd!  With Pixie as photobomber. Cast photo after the show--the black lump on the bottom right is Super Star as Herod. On Tuesday , our Christmas, we had a quiet day with presents, play, reading, and snacking. Waiting to be allowed into the living room . . . Nature Angel made most of her gifts to the family, and there were tears and sweet hugs all around....

Ladybug finished reading and narrating New Testament Stories. We went swimming. We played at the park. We played in the sand and water in our own yard. Super Star got her driver's license. Belle got hired by the amusement park, and in order to do so she HAD to have a state issued ID, so she got her permit . . . But she's not allowed to practice driving until she finishes her Personal Progress (which is what the older 3 had to complete to get their permits)! It was a week of quite a lot of peace. Enough peace that I began to think that the previous chaos had been all my fault. That it the anguish was mending because I was mending. Then Saturday arrived. We've been in a state of emergency ever since. Turns out the chaos wasn't all my fault.

We read about it. We talked about it. We planned on it. We set alarms on our phones for it. And we still managed to NOT go out to experience the awesome astronomical event of Sunday night. Nothing went wrong. We just forgot. And didn't notice the alarms that were supposed to remind us. C'est la vie . Monday Preschool book of the week:  Gracias*Thanks We dove into our usual routine easily.  Mondays are our review days for The Living Christ.  I love watching Mister Man, Ladybug, and Brother get into singing.  Their little voices get big, and the expressions on their faces as they hit the high notes deserves a photograph to appreciate--perhaps I'll put that on my priority list next week. We've finished the first quarter of lessons from The Mystery of History 2.  We had a blast running through the review questions included in the text.  It turns out that Nature Angel remembers Roman emperors quite well, while Super Star really absorbed the mat...

Our school week began on the weekend because Super Star made chicken noodle soup as part of her home economics class.  It was the first time she handled a whole raw chicken, and it rather grossed her out. But she survived. She also had to chop 2 onions, and that was a true problem for her as she is very sensitive to the onion fumes.  She wore a pair of swimming goggles, put a clothespin on her nose, sang songs of woe, and muttered, "I'm going to be rich when I grow up, and I'm going to eat pizza every day, and I will prosper, and I will never, ever chop onions again . . ." I laughed so hard, I cried. The soup was delicious. The next lesson learned was a practical lesson for Rose Red. Be careful when handling sharp tools. She thought she'd be cool and slice up a pair of old jeans to look like designer ripped jeans.  She found an old utility razor blade (where?!?) and set to work. She sliced her left index finger open necessitating 2 stitches and ...