Weekly Wrap-Up/ Tot School: Christmas Lights Edition

Kayleigh is currently 22 months

We are currently on break from all "formal" learning. We've been in cookie and visit mode. So here's our festive Weekly Wrap-Up and Tot School edition. #1

So here's what our week looked like. It looked PRETTY!

We went to visit my dad and step-mom in the middle of no-where, NC. This is their potting shed all decked out for Christmas. The only sign of Christmas there. Not even a tree. Gasp! LOL

One night Grandpa drove us out to see a house where the family is apparently very excited about Christmas. And they have deep pockets for their electric bill. All these shots came from one house.

Be sure to check out what everyone else is up to over at Carisa's and Kris'.

Weekly Wrap-Up

Happy Friday! It's time for our Weekly Wrap-up with Kris over at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Our week was relatively easy thanks to our modified Christmas schedule. It's working well, even though it's not what we usually do. I'm hoping that next year will work out better so we can take the month off, for Jesus, like we normally do. I doubt it though because I'm pretty certain we'll be moving sometime next fall and that we require addtional days off. (Hubby's retiring from the military and we're outta here. LOL)

Bible:

We are taking a break from our Grapevine Studies til after the holidays. Mackenzie has been continuing on with her regular Bible reading, scheduled by Sonlight, and we've been doing some Christmas centered activities.

I think our favorite this week was the new Veggie Tales movie, The Joy of Giving. The best Veggie Tales movie EVER! We loved it! It's about the history of Saint Nicolas and it's fabulous. We laughed and laughed and learned a few things.

Math:

She finished her x3s and aced her test. Now she's prepping for her x6s by working on skip counting by 6. With a little fraction work thrown in.

Social Studies:

We dropped our regular SS curriculum in favor of some more Christmas-oriented lapbooks. This week she made a lapbook based on the novel Felicity's Surprise. We got it here. Cheap!

It was perfect for our needs becauses that exactly the time period we're studying. And she has the Felicity doll so she was particularly excited.

Language Arts:

Nothing too exciting here. We're working hard on linking verbs and things called predicate nominatives. Working hard too because FLL has been covering that topic for a while now. LOL

Life Skills:

A new class on the home ec front called "Get rid of all the junk hiding around the house because we want to try and sell the place in the spring/summer." 'Nuf said except, not Mackenzie's favorite subject. We did her room yesterday. LOL

I did allow her a small taste of next week's life skills lesson. She seemed to enjoy this lesson more.

Here are some misc. shots of her this week.

Watching a movie with daddy.



Wrapping paper fun with wee babe. (Wee babe loves this and, 3 days later, still hunts around the house for her "stick." LOL)

Filling in our advent calendar. Not our most exciting one because I am not organized this year.

Tot School

Kayleigh is currently 21 months

I decided to try her on a Tot Book this week. She's been very into sitting at the table and doing her "work". (That's Kayleigh for scribbling with a pencil of her choice. LOL) She'll sit there for an hour sometimes just drawing away. Big sis is making several lapbooks as part of her school work during the holidays, so I thought this might be a good time to try Kayleigh on one. I chose to do the Christmas Tot Book from 1+1+1=1.

We're slowly working our way through it. I've just been giving her one sheet at a time to work on. She's been doing it for the most part, although she won't work on those as long as she would on her own work. I haven't assembled any part of the book yet. She's still working on her pages.

Here's a few shots of her.

Since Kayleigh did so well with the magnet activities last month I thought I'd try it again. I found the cutest Christmas activity, "J is for Jesus Magnet activity", over at Confessions of a Homeschooler. Wouldn't you know it she wanted nothing to do with it this time. She just said no and pushed it away. =o( I guess there's always next week.

We have all of our Christmas books and movies out for the holidays. Kayleigh was very drawn to this version of Away in the Manger. She must have liked Thomas Kinkade's beautiful artwork.

She was particularly interested in how Baby Jesus (Baby G in Kayleigh speak) was "seep-in". Here she is signing the word sleep. They she would shush us to be quiet. LOL

She also enjoyed watching the latest Veggie Tale movie, The Joy of Giving. She especially liked dancing to the music.

She practiced 1:1 correspondance by gluing foam circles onto a Happy Birthday Jesus printable from 1+1+1=1. I was very surprised that she completed the whole thing.

One of her favorite activities was inspired by Sissy and a roll of wrapping paper. Sissy taught her how to "ride" it. This has been a daily activity since she was first alerted to it. She's forever asking for her "stick" and then "riding" around shouting "neigh." LOL

I'm sad to say the stick is no longer able to be ridden because mommy started wrapping presents.

One thing I'm particularly excited about is how her shape recognition. I was drawing shapes for her on our Magna Doodle. She was able to name stars, hearts, circles, triangles and squares. I was so excited.

And to round out our week, 2 photos that make me LOL.

Check out what the other tots are doing over at Carisa's.

Weekly-Wrap Up

Hello my cyber homeschooling friends! It's time for the Weekly Wrap-Up hosted by Kris over at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. Actually it was time 2 days ago. I'm late as usual. LOL

I'm going to blame my hubby this time. LOL Since he's home I have less time on the computer. Yeah, that's it.

This was our first full week of school in a couple of weeks. We've been doing school-lite in preparation for Daddy's homecoming and then just hanging out with him. Basically all Kenzie did was work on her Thanksgiving Lapbook. It's all finished and you can see it here.

Here's our run down of this week.

Bible:

Well it wasn't a really fun topic this week. We studied satan and how he attempts to tempt us. We also talked about all the ways that God equips to deal with this temptation.

Mackenzie never likes this topic. It freaks her out a bit. She did, however, like drawing stick-figure satan for our Bible curriculum. LOL

Math:

We are studying x3s in math. For whatever reason, Mackenzie cannot remember 9x3. ROFL She missed on 4 problems. Those were the only ones she got wrong. It kind of made be giggle.

Science:

We're still studying birds this week. She did all of her science independently this week so I don't have all the details. She chattered on about things that she learned so I'm sure that some of it stuck. LOL

Social Studies/Reading:

Since these subjects are alway on the same topic, I've decided to write about them together.

We are still studying colonial America. We're approaching the revolution time period. This week was about how the different colonies "ran things" as background for the American Revolution. There was a lot about Virginia, which we liked because we live here. If it weren't starting to get cold, we'd be headed back to Williamsburg. But we were there fairly recently so I guess it can wait.

We finished reading The Witch of Blackbird Pond. It was fabulous when I read it as a child and it's fabulous now. To say that Mackenzie loved is an understatement. LOL

She was reading The Matchlock Gun but misplaced it. Grrrr....She'll be finishing that when she finds it.

We're going to be taking a break from official SS work until after Christmas. Normally we'd be finished with school for the entire month and do only Advent activities. However taking off all those weeks last month warrants a change of plans. So we're dropping SS and some LA.

We'll be continuing with math/science and adding in a Christmas Symbols lapbook, a lapbook based on the book Felicity's Surprise (of the American Girl variety), and, if time warrants, one on The Polar Express. I found some grammar activities based on The Polar Express too. Or so I hope. That's a lot of lapbooks. LOL

I don't have any school pictures this week. But we went to the command Christmas party yesterday so I'll post my favorite picture of Kenzie from that. We had free bowling, free food and drink, and a visit from Santa. Did I mention free?

Tot School

Kayleigh is currently 21 months

Hello fellow Tot Schoolers! We're back!

We've been slacking off Tot School a bit these last couple of weeks. We got distracted by other things, like Daddy coming home from Iraq. Yay!! So that's what we've been doing. Hanging with Daddy.

Kayleigh took to him like he'd never left. So he's enjoying her attitude, stubborness and fits just like the rest of us. LOL

We did do a few Tot School activities this week.

Our first activity was more spooning. I bought a new, snowman-shaped icecube tray and jewels. Last month Kayleigh liked doing this activity, as long as it was done her way. Her way being shaking the pumpkin and acorn jewels to make lots of noise or dropping the whole lot on the floor. I wasn't looking forward to that but thought we'd give it a try again.

And guess what? For a (very short) period of time, she actually did what I wanted. It was amazing! Mackenzie and I were shocked.



I reeled her in by telling her the snowmen were hungry and they need a "bite". She loves to steal "bites" from other people and she loves to feed babies so she was interested for a little bit.

Her interest was short lived. I pulled out the activity a couple more times this week but all she wanted to do was make a mess and lots of noise with it.

The second activity that I'm going to share is what she did with her new nesting blocks. Now we have nesting blocks already but when I saw these, I had to have them. Who doesn't need seasonal nesting blocks, right?

I, as always, had grand visions of how this activity was going to play out. We were going to sit happily stacking the blocks as I told the story of Christmas that is so nicely displayed all over them.

Now I knew I was asking A LOT. At our house block use looks like this: I stack the blocks about 3 high before she knocks them all down. She doesn't help build, EVER, and I never get higher than 3.

Naturally this activity did not go as planned. She had no interest in hearing the story of Christmas. Not on blocks, not from books, not by watching it on T.V. LOL But she did surprise me by stacking the blocks, all of them, all by herself. If I didn't have pictures, I still wouldn't believe it.

Naturally, this was a one time only deal. She would not stack them again and the blocks never make it past 3 high. LOL

One of her other activities, that I didn't photograph, was playing with our Little People Nativity. That's still one of Mackenzie's favorite things too. Kayleigh likes to push the angel on top and dance around to Away in the Manger. I hope to get video of that next week.

Oh and she's finally starting to recognize some her shapes. She's been naming hearts, stars, and circles consistently for a couple of weeks. I'm so excited.

She's still not gotten her colors down. I thought she might have gotten pink and green but it turns out that was a fluke. That's okay. We're adding quite a few things to our Tot School collection when Christmas comes. Including a laminator for mommy. =o)

And here's her other new "skill."

Pretty impressive, huh? LOL

Be sure to check out the other tot's news skills over at Carisa's.