School Update and Gingerbread Fun

Wow, after Thanksgiving it seems I began to totally neglect this blog. My diligence on my homeschool blog is not always an accurate reflection of my diligence in our actual homeschooling, but in this case... it's pretty close! (Just kidding, we have been doing school.)

We used to take off the entire month of December, but for the past couple of years we haven't. While I enjoyed the ginormous break while it was happening, I found it that much harder to get "back on track" in January. Struggling to get us (well, mainly myself) back up to speed in January seemed to set me up for my annual February Freak-out all the more. So. We started maintaining at least some sort of schedule in December.

This year, however, I let them each choose a subject to not do during the month of December- a break for them and for me. I could hardly get the entire question out of my mouth before my sweet son exclaimed, "Math!!!" So, he's enjoyed a math-free December. My daughter, who is prone to feeling behind if she's not plowing ahead, decided to keep doing all of her subjects but said she would enjoy no tests. I thought that was a great choice! So she has enjoyed a test-free existence these past few weeks. Our "together subjects" that we typically do on Friday- Latin, Art and Mission Study- have fallen by the wayside since Thanksgiving. And that's okay.

All in all, it has been a lighter school month, but a productive one. Today we are officially "out". I have not updated the specifics of our school progress these past few weeks, because as I frequently say, sometimes you're just too busy doing it to post about it!

Over the break between Christmas and New Year (besides celebrating my anniversary with my cute husband) I will be refining our spring semester plans. My daughter and I are looking at adding another science course, and I will be planning their writing. (They've spent fall on grammar.) With our forthcoming adoption and accompanying uncertainty of the travel dates and plans, it looks like we may just plow ahead and do school all summer, right into next fall. (Basically continuously until the baby comes!) to build in some margin time-wise for when we are adjusting and need to take some extended time off. So, as I'm planning our spring I'll be keeping that in mind.

I'll close this "update" with some fun pictures. Every year since they were little we've always made gingerbread houses. ( When I say "made" I mean I went to Linen's N' Things and bought the pre-made houses and we decorated them. I've never gotten the homemade kind to stand up. They would always turn into a "Gingerbread lean-to," which wasn't exactly the look I was going for!) Over the weekend we had some dear "MK" friends stay with us- one of their last weekends in the states!- and they enjoyed making gingerbread houses along with us.

I love this picture because on the wall behind them is the place (a wall planter, actually) where we keep photos of people (especially overseas missionaries) for whom we are praying. Unless we are in Asia working with them, the only way we see these sweet girls is when we see them on their prayer card on our wall. And here they are, right here in our kitchen! What fun.

Kyle had to do his later because he had been on an errand with Dad...

The finished products turned out great!

A gingerbread neighborhood! I eventually moved ours to the china cabinet. We used to leave them out, but then the dogs discovered them. It wasn't pretty.

Well, that's a little of what's been going on at our house. Have a great Christmas break!