Weekly-Wrap-Up

Highlights in Our Homeschool This Week...

Chris is still writing his prequel to "The Daisy and Max series" and he started writing a character synopsis "book" for the series.

Katie is writing a Christmas story which she hopes to read to us on Christmas.

Chelsea is studying "geology" on her own.  She saw something on Webkins world and asked me for all of our books about rocks.  This morning she is on the floor surrounded by books and sticky notes.

We watched three Christmas shows.

We made and decorated salt-dough ornaments (from a recipe I found on-line years ago.)

                                            Salt-Dough Ornament Recipe

2 cups water
1 cup salt
1 cup water

Mix salt and flour.  Add in half of the water, then gradually add remaining water.  Knead until dough is smooth, this can take up to 10 minutes.

We use our Christmas cookie cutters to make the ornaments and use a straw to make the hole to hang the ornaments.

Bake at 325 F until hard.  This varies depending upon the thickness of the ornaments.  Ours took about 30 minutes.

Let cool and paint.  We used tempera paint and acrylic paint.




We're Reading...

Chris read #3,4,5,6, and is reading #7 in The Alex Rider series.  He is still reading Johnny Tremain.

Katie read The Cricket in Times Square by George Selden, M&M and the Santa Secrets, Oliver and Amanda's Christmas, and is reading Amos Fortune Free Man.

Chelsea read The Courage of Sarah Noble, The Cricket in Times Square, and The Boxcar Children #23.

Chelsea is reading Harry Potter #1 to Katie.

Daddy is reading A Christmas Carol to all of us.

I read A Voice of Her Own: Becoming Emily Dickinson by Barbara Dana and am reading The Crystal Cave: Book One of The Arthurian Saga by Mary Stewart.


Places We're Going...

ballet, watercolor class, and driving around looking at Christmas lights


My Favorite Thing This Week...

Piling in the car listening to Christmas music, getting hot chocolate and Christmas star doughnuts at DD, and driving around looking at Christmas lights.


I'm Baking:
cranberry bread and apricot-filled rolled cookies

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation Moment...

Someone let the water in the Christmas tree dry up (no names) and our beautiful Christmas tree started to wilt.  We went on-line and determined that we had to re-cut the bottom of the tree.  So there I am holding the very heavy bulky tall sticky tree while my dear husband attempts to handsaw the bottom of the tree while ornaments drop down around us.  Can you see it ?
Remember the scene in Christmas Vacation when Clark (after getting his very sappy Christmas tree)  is reading a magazine and turning the pages and the pages are adhered to his fingers... That was me :0)