Baking, Building, and Beards

I began and ended the week with baking. My beginning baking was for yet another attempt to make money for our church building project. It utterly failed. I am short-story challenged, so I’ll write more on that Monday. My ending baking is for us! Yes, I finally had a moment to bake for us! So we may have a dessert for Christmas after all! 🙂 (If you know me, you know I would have willed a way for that to happen.)

Caleb and I delivered Christmas gifts to the neighbors today, and a big Sunday service planned for two days hence is almost prepared for. And I feel a huge sigh of relief that in the midst of all the bustle, we managed to fit in a full week of homeschooling. We not only managed–we conquered! 😉 Caleb has, for all practical purposes, finished first grade. Oh, that makes me happy!

We may take another week after Christmas sometime to finish up some odds and ends. We could read a couple more stories in his final reader, do a few more handwriting pages, a couple more Bible stories from Acts, etc.; but the main reason I want to do one more light week is to finish history. We have two chapters left; and I’d like to get the whole story in now, rather than pushing it onto next school year.

This week, we finished science, as well as a health reader, phonics, math (Singapore 1B–we skipped two sections on an intro to multiplication and division–I thought that was a bit much for first grade and will wait to introduce that with Math U See), and spelling.

For science this week we covered the integumentary system, how God created us in His image, and the 7th day of creation when God rested. We reviewed all the systems of the body we had learned and briefly discussed how rest helps each of them. (Anyone know how rest helps the circulatory system?) We watched Windows of the Soul, a science DVD from Moody, which was over the kids’ heads but fascinating to me. Caleb wrote a letter to God, thanking Him for our systems, and specifically our senses. I will treasure that letter. For nature study, Seth helped the boys observe how some of our plants are reseeding and spreading themselves.

Writing his letter and a page on rest for his science notebook.

In history, we learned about how the Christians had to hide in catacombs. The boys made a family sign (like the Christians made a fish), which they put on our homemade catacombs. We were having fun pretending to hide away from Roman soldiers, but the reality hit as well that we are blessed to have religious freedom, need to pray for persecuted Christians, and persevere ourselves if we are persecuted.

Though the toddlers kept wrecking them, our catacombs were pretty big at one point.

We concentrated on time, American money, and addition and subtraction review in math. We reviewed in phonics and spelling. Caleb has grown so much in his knowledge this year! That is so rewarding to me as both parent and teacher.

I took a break from 100 Easy Lessons (to teach Colin reading) and pulled out the Little Owl readers from ABeka. He needs to work on fluency with CVC words before moving on to long vowels. He loved being able to fly through those little easy books. He sounds out CVC words very slowly, so I’m happy with my decision to stop the other guide for a while.

He will probably not finish his K4 workbooks before we start kindergarten next year, but that’s all right. He did get quite a bit done. The fine motor skills needed for handwriting are his nemesis right now, but I keep things upbeat and positive.

Callie and Carson are a fun handful. Callie would be pretty easy, I think, if it weren’t for her younger brother constantly tearing her beloved playthings out of her hands and running away at top toddler speed. Callie screams as high as her alto voice will allow, and all learning in the house comes to a standstill–except for the instruction Callie and Carson get. Carson picked up a cold at the end of the week and has been tired and cranky. Maybe he’s teething.

Seth is busy with building the church foundation and normal ministries and visitation. He’s starting to grow a beard–not my favorite, so it probably won’t last long. 😉 It really does affect our kissing quota, you know?

He fell asleep right before lunch while Seth was studying for his sermon.

My baking prevented my writing more this week, but I did manage to hammer out a few general New Year’s goals. I hope you’ll join me with some of yours!