It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Nov 30 - Dec 4

"As ye are desirous to enter into the fold of god, and to be called his people, and are willing to bear one another's burdens that they may be light;"         Mosiah 18:8

My favorite part of the day has become circle time and independent work time. Unfortunately this was a crazy week, so we didn't have a "normal" day of school until Thursday! We had dentist appointments, piano, a play date, and CC taking up our mornings, so we had to bump school time to the afternoon. When it works, though, circle time is just pleasant and spiritual, and independent work time is when I can actually have a few minutes to spend individually with each child - something I have been trying unsuccessfully to do for years! I finished our bulletin board and made some laminated maps and times tables, too, which has helped them focus and retain information during circle time.

I love watching Henry's progress. We started doing copywork for 10 minutes straight (he has to copy the sentence for 10 minutes), and he is filling up a page or two, which has done wonders for his writing stamina and handwriting! He did the weight chapter in his Singapore Math book this week and next week we finally get to start multiplication.

Archer is working on his capital letters - I am trying to rush through them to get to the lower case letters because he really has nice penmanship and that is where he needs work so that we can start actual copywork. In math he is working on addition within 10. It's pretty simple for him - I think I may start having him do more drill work so that we can just move on.

We started the Christmas season this week around here! We put up our tree (fake this year), put up our Christmas cuckoo clock, and kind of decorated elsewhere. We are working through this 25 Days of Christ ornament kit that my mom got us. It has been fun to have Christmas devotionals in the mornings! We also have an advent calendar that I intend to put a service activity in each day. It happened yesterday - we'll see how we do the rest of the month! They had a blast writing thank you cards to their friends. It was also good handwriting practice!