Week 14, day 3

School didn't happen on Wednesday. The kids hung out with their Oma all morning while Ari and I went Christmas shopping for them (we're making them kites - shh, don't tell), and in the afternoon I had a midwife appointment from which I only got home at 3pm. (I really like the fact that my midwife spends a full hour chatting with me at every visit - so much better than what I've heard about big OB practices). By that time I didn't think it would be worth the stress of trying to get anything done, besides which the kids were enjoying being read to by their Oma, so instead I took them to the library when she was done. The outside of the library, that is, because "an incident" caused the library to close without warning for the rest of the day, so although the official closing time was 6pm, it wasn't open at 4:30pm when we came. We tried again on Thursday, and they were open (I called first).

Bible (Catechism, Bible story, memory verse): We reviewed a couple of verses, and read the story of Jesus' birth. The story went into Joseph's initial reservations about Mary's pregnancy, which led to an interesting discussion of just who should have babies when (I summarized it as "you ought to be married, and if you aren't it's a problem, unless an angel from God tells you otherwise").

Calendar (Update day of week and date of month, record weather and temperature): It's been cloudy and/or rainy all week long. But this (Friday) morning we woke up to clear skies. Hooray!

Handwriting: I had P write her first and last name on the envelope of the card she made for her friend last time we did school. Her handwriting is still too large to comfortably fit the return address on the envelope as well, so I wrote that.

Language Arts: P did the copywork and read the reader to E (I wished I had my camera, it was really neat to see the two of them sitting together reading, but if I'd gone downstairs to grab it she'd have been done before I got back up). We played a "Tigger Toss" game where all the letters we've looked at so far were spread out on the floor, I said a word starting with one of the letters, and the kids took turns tossing a stuffed Tigger puppet onto the starting letter.

Math (5-a-day, other activities): P did her 5-a-day without much difficulty, though it seemed like she'd switched her brain off when trying to write a 6 - it ended up as an 8, a 0, and a spiral before she finally got it right. Perhaps we should spend some handwriting time reviewing number formation.

E's "school": This week's SSGMR activity involves tracing around an object such as a mixing bowl or a book with a pencil, using a marker to trace on top of the pencil line, colouring in the shape, and cutting it out. E enjoyed doing this, and P watched patiently, which I used as an example when E was messing with P while she did her 5-a-day.

Geography and/or science: We made it to the library, and checked out books on Iceland, Norway, Denmark, the Vikings, the Solar System, various planets, and magnets. Once home, we read about Jupiter (a fairly good book, I didn't have to correct anything and only added a few points that I found interesting but the author hadn't), the Vikings (the book was over the kids' heads, but we discussed the pictures), and Mars (unclear, inaccurate writing by someone who HASN'T studied the Red Planet for several years at Caltech. I ignored the text entirely and told them like it was. At least the pictures were okay. Perhaps you should just never check out a book for your kids that deals with your area of expertise, but I think the key is that this particular author was neither capable of understanding science nor of writing in English).

Other: The kids decorated the cookies they baked a few days ago, using icing in ziploc bags with one corner cut off. If sufficient force is applied closer to the zip closure than to the open corner, the zip closure bursts open and a gallon of icing spills out, even if there was only half a cup of icing in the bag to begin with. I think this was mainly because I was trying to cook dinner at the same time, and E didn't think it as much of a problem as I did (I have no idea how many globs of icing he ate before I became aware of the situation). Okay, it wasn't really a gallon, it really was more like half a cup, but half a cup of icing is a LOT.