We Had a Happy Thanksgiving!

It was nice to have a little break from school for Thanksgiving! It's interesting though...the past few days I've been itching to get back to our school schedule, kind of funny.

Our Thanksgiving consisted of us staying home this year and just celebrating together, the three of us. My husband is taking classes for his work and needed to catch up on some projects that were coming due, so it just made sense. Because we stayed home, we got to enjoy spending a little bit of down time (finally!) together which was so very long overdue and so very nice. We went to the movie Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (LOVED it!!!). We went downtown and enjoyed our community's Christmas celebration and took in the local museum while we were there too. I had no idea that it had so much to share AND that it had a train set up in the basement. Very cool!

Checking out our local museum reminded me that there are definitely hidden gems right here in our community to seek out and take advantage of. It's so very easy to get comfy here at home and think there isn't anything to do that's exciting, not the case!

We also put up and decorated our Christmas tree, we have a longstanding tradition of doing this after Thanksgiving. My husband also put up outdoor lights this year which is fun. My daughter and I have our own little tradition too of setting up a doll Christmas tree and scene...this is ours for this year.

A couple of rounds of my all-time favorite game ever was played too...

It was a beautiful break! We're now excited to be back in full swing with school though and resuming our studies of the winter holidays.

We hope you enjoyed a wonderful holiday break too!

Winter Holidays Unit Study | Winter Solstice

 

We've been continuing our reading of our books on the Winter Solstice and have been enjoying the tales from around the world especially so.

Our weather is finally starting to get a bit cooler so we fashioned some simple bird feeders using pine cones, peanut butter and bird seed.

There are actually lots of ideas for Winter Solstice bird feeders/winter bird feeders at The Crafty Crow. Last year we made ones using hollowed out orange peels and filling the orange peel halves with seeds. I always think these feeders are so pretty hanging from the trees.

We read today that a long time ago people would hang apples and other fruits and foods from the evergreen trees to remind them that spring was to return again and that greener days were ahead.

I got Zoey's pointe shoes sewn up for dance class, I've done them up three different ways now and they are still popping off the backs of her heels so it looks like her dance teacher is going to try and find a different pair for her. I'm happy that she'll be getting a different pair but am nervous that it's going to be too late to break them in on time for the upcoming Nutcracker performance coming up in mid December. We're going to stay positive and see what happens though.

Yesterday was my birthday. We had a somewhat quiet day of school mixed in with some sewing of Zoey's shoes for dance and then I had to head in to an evening of work at the library. I came home and then was up until at least 3am due to having a sharp pain in the middle of my stomach that wouldn't go away, I was convinced that I had appendicitis and that the evening/morning was going to end with me going in to the emergency room but somehow I made it through the night and then slept for a few hours in the morning. Upon waking the pain slowly subsided and I've been alright for the most part all day. Praying that I stay healthy here these next few days. Not exactly the way I would have preferred to bring in the start of my "new" year but, things could have been way worse!

XO,
Jen

Winter Holidays Unit Study | Winter Solstice

In addition to our readings today from The Return of the Light: Twelve Tales from Around the World for the Winter Solstice by Carolyn McVickar Edwards we read the book The Shortest Day by Wendy Pfeffer.

I also had Zoey watch the following short videos. 

She thought they were a bit cheesy (the voices mostly) but they are good review on the "why" of equinoxes and solstices I thought.

 

Most of our afternoon (after some math and other work) consisted of sewing Zoey's new pointe shoes that just came in for ballet class. They've been back-ordered since the start of her dance class this year and she has yet to go on pointe at her lessons which hasn't made me feel very good about her upcoming performance. After sewing them this afternoon we discovered that they pop off the back of her heel while walking, let alone while going up and down from being on pointe. Not a happy mama or daughter! We're going to take them apart tomorrow and try sewing them a different way, but if they don't work out we'll be having a discussion with her dance teacher. I feel like it's pretty late in the season for discovering we have shoe issues! Plus, all of the other dancers in her class have had their shoes for over a month or two! She should have had her shoes for some time now. Grrrr...

Tomorrow we are hoping to make some simple bird feeders and dig more into our Winter Solstice study. Hoping we can rest easy about her pointe shoes getting figured out too!

Winter Holidays Unit Study | Winter Solstice

We started off our Winter Solstice study by creating a crown using yule greens, (or what we could come up with here that look like or are similar to yule greens). Since people celebrating the solstice (which is around December 21st) are known to dress up, I thought this might be right up Zoey's alley since she loves dressing up. In celebrating Yule, some say you should enjoy yourself as much as possible on the Winter Solstice (this including dressing up) because this will bring back the light (and lightness) into the world. The Winter Solstice marks the shortest day and the longest night of the year.

For our project of making a Winter Solstice crown we gathered as many natural materials as we could find from our woods and I bought some floral tape and wire at our local dollar store.

We measured Zoey's head and looped several loops of the wire into a circle and Zoey covered all the loops with the green floral tape, creating her bare crown.

We started creating a base for the crown by attaching evergreen using little bits of wire that Zoey looped throughout the greenery so it was snug on the crown. She then added other bits here and there doing the same with little lengths of wire that we cut.

She wanted a simple crown and I think it turned out just sweet as can be!

Of course I had to take a few pictures of her modeling her Winter Solstice crown.

Our first project was a hit! I'm feeling thankful that we had nice weather to work on this project together outside today. It really was a nice way to spend the afternoon.

Winter Holidays Unit Study | Winter Solstice

This week we are starting our Winter Holidays Around the World unit of study from Build Your Library. I've mentioned it already in previous blog posts, but I'm really excited about it and so is Zoey! I hope our excitement is warranted. We are adding in lots of additional projects to make it a bit meatier since we are pressing pause on our normal geography and science curriculum just during this unit study. We will be continuing on with math, grammar, and handwriting. Geography, writing, reading, art and some science is incorporated with our unit study. 

Our areas of study in the following weeks will be:

Winter Solstice

Hanukkah

Kwanzaa

Chinese New Year and

Christmas

We're starting with studying about the Winter Solstice and our first project will be to craft a celebration crown of sorts using some yule greens along with other bits and pieces that we find. 

One of the books that we will be starting this week is The Return of the Light: Twelve Tales from Around the World for the Winter Solstice by Carolyn McVickar Edwards. Along with this book of stories we will be reading several picture books as well. I'm a firm believer (being a part-time library employee) that it's fantastic to read picture books even if you are well into adulthood! I have been known to tell people that some of my all time favorite books are indeed childrens books, so I don't feel badly that we are working these into our studies. 

It's been kind of difficult for us to get into the spirit of the upcoming holidays here since the weather has been so unusually warm and sunny! Two years ago at this time we had 17 inches of snow already! Zoey has been checking the weather online every day and there hasn't been any snowfall foretasted in the near future as of yet. To say she is patiently waiting for snow would be perhaps a false statement if there ever was one. She can't wait for it to snow and I have to admit that I am anxiously waiting too! 

I'll be sharing some more of our Winter Solstice activities here throughout the rest of the week...it feels good to have a little bit of the weekend left to enjoy finally! After being sick for so many days and working with Zoey on school and at the library through it all, I'm ready to get back on track again. Sitting at my desk and organizing for the week ahead has me already feeling more prepared. 

The Old Schoolhouse Magazine Homeschool Review Crew

Upon starting homeschooling Zoey I was turning to many homeschool blogs to read about resources that other homeschooling families were using and to see what seemed to be working for other families that had kiddos my daughter's age as well as just for some support. Upon doing so, I happened upon a few bloggers that have since become favorites of mine that I regularly check in with, when I can. One of Zoey's favorite blogs (she's the one that found it!) and now mine, is the Unexpected Homeschool blog written by Christy Schaefer. I think Zoey likes it so much because Christy has an only child who happens to be a girl and is (seemingly) just a bit older than Zoey. One day while reading Christy's blog, she posted about openings in the Homeschool Review Crew for The Old Schoolhouse Magazine and shared a link to an application. After thinking about it for a bit, I went ahead and sent one in. Zoey was encouraging me to do so as she wanted to be just as much a part of this as I. Several days later we received notification that we were accepted and have been invited to be an official part of the crew! We're so excited! 

For more information on how to become a contributor and reviewer for this group yourself, be sure to check out this post on the Schoolhouse Review site. I believe they are still seeking applicants for additional reviewers for this upcoming year.

I can't wait to learn more about the opportunities we will have now that we will be writing reviews here and there for the Schoolhouse Review Crew! Very honored and very excited for the mentor-ship, aide and support that we will be given along with this opportunity! Feeling very blessed.

Election Unit Recap!

Zoey and I ended up both getting really sick here this past week and a half or so. Not fun...sore throat, congestion, hacking cough, etc. Yuck! The good thing though, is that hopefully this means we won't be sick for the upcoming holidays. Zoey is still fighting the cough...but is on her way to full recovery soon, barring any setbacks.

This past week was kinda crazy. Our garage door broke which caused all sorts of interesting issues all on it's own (including my husband being late for work). We had work done on my car and discovered we needed even more work done on it upon picking it up. Zoey had a routine dentist appt. which ended up in making another dentist appt. to get a filling on her first ever cavity and then being told that we need to make a visit to an orthodontist now for some other areas of interest. Blah. It was the kind of week that you just wanted to have be over and done with. Thankful that it now is!

Zoey worked diligently on her election unit despite not feeling the best. We covered a lot of ground using this guide for young people written and shared by a fellow homeschooling parent. We added in suggested books from Build Your Library's election unit (we really enjoyed the book, See How They Run), along with some additional ones that I found at our local library and added in some videos and other fun things from our paid Brain Pop! subscription. I also had requested (for free) some materials from kids.usa.gov and they got here in time for us to use them which was great. For printables and worksheets I used free downloadable ones from Time for Kids. On the day of the election Zoey finished up her project board and that night she filled in her electoral map as the states were called one way or the other. She ended up going to bed a bit after midnight, as did I. Something that never would have happened if she was in public school! But sleeping in the next day and picking up where she left off was just fine. She watched Donald Trump's speech as well as Hillary Clinton's concession speech and a bit of news and we spent the rest of the day enjoying time outdoors and taking full advantage of this unseasonably beautiful weather we've been having. We also talked about a bit of poetry on this day...

We are wrapping up a few loose ends here with this current unit these next couple of days and plowing through her math, handwriting and grammar at the same time. Next week we start our unit study of winter holidays around the world and we're both so excited!!