Homeschool Happenings - Week 16

I remember, when I taught school, how exciting this last week of school was before Christmas break.  I would plan special activities that revolved around our studies currently, make special crafts, finish up work on Christmas gifts I would make my students, and plan our Christmas party.  Really, I was just trying to make the week go faster so I could enjoy a few weeks off HA!  (Now you know how teachers feel!) I have a similar feeling this week - I want to do some fun things, wrap up some studies, and get ready to take some time off. 

 I shared on Monday about the Snowflake craft that we made this past week.  We usually do our crafts on the day that the munchkin I babysit doesn't go to preschool which is normally Friday but, this week he did not have school on Tuesday (but went on Friday instead) so we did our craft on Tuesday.  They all enjoyed glitter glue and paint to the fullest extent possible.

 The boys had fun "rolling" a gingerbread man (the idea comes from Teaching Hearts) .  They always love when they get to use the giant foam dice that we have and, amazingly, they had very few extra rolls; they had to tally mark each number that they rolled and you can see that there weren't a lot of marks!  (Josh's is the one above and Nates picture is the orange one.)

 Another day, we colored this cute little reindeer based on reading sight words. This comes from a packet created by The Moffatt Girls. 

 The boys really love to sing so using some printables from 1+1+1=1 to teach them "The Twelve Days of Christmas".  We sing one section each day and they have a number tracing sheet to do as well.

 Nate's numbers to our song.

 Josh's Numbers to our song.

I really struggled this holiday season with what to use to teach the Christmas story.  I've done something dinfferent over the past two years and thought about using one of those again but, honestly, I wasn't feeling a month long advent study - I felt like it was just too much.  Then I came across this 12 days of Christmas concept from Happy Home Fairy that was perfect.  It's just these little cards/pictures that you place inside an envelope; each day pull out the card which tells one piece of the Christmas story and the pictures.  It's a great way to talk about the Christmas Story with the boys. 

Just a peak at our White Board.  Josh likes to keep track of how many days we have to special things such as Nate's birthday (The "Happy Birthday") and Christmas.  He changes the numbers every day.

Our regular school work is going great.  Josh accomplished a big thing in phonics . . .he can sound out words; he is beginning to read!  It is so awesome to see that happen and see him start to put the sounds together. 

It's hard to believe that we are coming into our last week of school for 2014.  We will take the week of Christmas off without anything school related at all.  We will do some fun things but mostly, we'll focus on Nate's birthday and Christmas.  The week of New Years, I'd like to do as little as possible but I may plan a couple of fun crafts to break up our day.