Although some folks take off the whole month of December, which I love in theory, it doesn’t work for us — at least not at this point in our lives — since it’s easier to work with Lindsey’s public school schedule, and because there is always some time around Thanksgiving and Christmas when Kathryn is with her dad so we have to take those weeks off. Anyway, that means we’ve still been doing school, but after today’s half-day, we are done ’til the second week of January!

A few Instagram highlights from our week:
a little history reading; flipping pancakes for breakfast; and a Hanukkah word-find.

In A Child’s Geography, we’ve been learning about the oceans. For our U.S. state studies, we’ve had Kansas and Missouri this week and last week.

In history, we’re reading about all sorts of different happenings around the world during the late 1800’s, and about the United States’ expansion and events leading up to the Civil War.

We finished reading the biography on Alexander Graham Bell last week, and the mentions in that book about Helen Keller got Kathryn wanting to know more, so this week she read Toward the Light by Stewart and Polly Graff. The reading level in that biography is not very high, but we both learned a great deal about her life. In Kathryn’s review of the book, she said it was written “sort of little-kiddish, but really interesting.”

We had a brief frustration this week in math about triangles, because really, why is an obtuse triangle called an obtuse triangle when there are TWO acute angles in it and only ONE obtuse angle? But I had Kathryn play with triangles on Math is Fun, and she made peace with the triangles so math could go on happily the rest of the week. I’m still really liking Teaching Textbooks.

In Beautiful Girlhood, we read about the character traits of truthfulness and sincerity. Even though the book is rather old-fashioned in language and examples, I do like the discussions it sometimes starts.

For free reading the past two weeks, Kathryn has been working her way through The Chronicles of Narnia series. She’s currently on The Silver Chair.

In honor of Hanukkah, which began this week, Kathryn taught us how to play dreidel and we discussed it’s meaning. And finally, I have learned a few Hebrew letters! (Ken took this photo of the spinning dreidel while we played.)

In informal learning this week, Kathryn had a dentist visit and we got to see x-rays of ALL her teeth. Pretty cool! (And still no cavities in all her eleven years: hurray for her!) We also Christmased with Ken’s mom and Brandon and Diane yesterday, and I’ve started a bit of decluttering, which I plan to continue in increasing intensity in the coming year! Bwahaha!!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS to all!

Jamie

Wife, mom, J-ma. Introvert who enjoys good books, sunshine, and authentic conversation. Often seen with a steaming mug of tea in hand – unless it’s lost yet again in the microwave. Read more »