week #11 (3rd week of 3rd block)

The kids play a sensory-enhanced game of Twister, wearing their body socks while playing.

Ok, so it was only a half week. We did schoolwork on Monday through Wednesday, and took Thursday through Saturday off. Thursday of course was Thanksgiving, which we celebrated on that day with The Map Man's family at his brother's house, and again on Saturday at our house with my family.

We only had one story cycle, reading and working with the classic Fairy Tale, "Rumpelstiltskin". We continued with our Canoe Trip Adventure Circle, although this might be the last week that we use it, as I'm not certain it's fulfilling the kids' needs as well as it could be.

Monday homeschool classes is on a break until January, so we had extra time for building and playing, which always seems to serve my kids well.



I took the opportunity of all this time off to finish up my holiday shopping (insanely early for me!), and to work on our photo holiday cards. The Map Man weaseled his way into my extremely amateur photo-shoot with the boys. The cards came out cute (and did NOT include The Man!), but you'll all have to wait to see them! (neener, neener!)









My brother, Big J, making a pig out of himself at our holiday dinner on Saturday.

Story Time stories for this week were Goose Moon, by Carolyn Arden, illustrated by Jim Postier; The First Thanksgiving, by Jean Craighead George, illustrated by Thomas Locker; and The Great Canoe, A Karina Legend, retold by Maria Elean Maggi, illustrated by Gloria Calderon (and I have to highly recommend this if anyone is looking for a "great flood" story outside of the Judeo-Christian traditions -- amazing parallels between this story and that of Noah's Ark).


It was nice of our favorite pilgrim, Tom Brady, to drop by for dinner -- and look, he even brought us a turkey!! (Don't think too much about this one, it's only in here to amuse Christine!)

We continued reading our current chapter book, A Cricket in Times Square, which we are all enjoying -- progress is a little slow because we're including The Map Man, so we only read when all of us our present, which means no reading at rest time. So it'll take us a bit longer to get through our books from now on, but I think The Man is enjoying the stories as much as we are, so it's worth it!

Now, after a few days off, I am in danger of falling into the pit of non-existent rhythms. Already it's nearly 3pm on Monday of our 12th week, and we've done nothing resembling school work yet. There's still time!! But in order to accomplish that, I actually need to get off my butt and DO something...there's a story somewhere waiting to be read! But first, we're heading out for a walk to enjoy this most unusually mild first day of December....