K k

Thought I'd get this out there already so I don't forget. We won't be having anymore projects this week, anyway, save the collage, which they enjoy so much ... and someone tells me Santa may be bringing something to help them work on future collages...

The goal here is to "shower Jesus, our King with gifts of kindness", so they're earning kindness stickers to decorate their "King" throughout the week. It was a rough start, but they got the hang of it quickly, realizing that they do, in fact, do many kind things already without thinking about them. So, add those to out-of-the-way kindness, and they're enjoying the stickers.

Tuesday, we had a discussion about kings of today and where they are in the world and a massive reading time with the Kk books from the library. Have I mentioned that every week has a great list of books to go with it? Some lists are better than others, fluke of the letter, really, and this week's are all fab! 

Then Wednesday brought us to the St. Katherine Drexel Chapel at Xavier University, which she founded. I called earlier in the week to see if their usual noon Masses would still be on the week before Christmas, and when we arrived, the priest gave us a big welcome and a tour because he expected us. We brought the grand total of participants to 8, including the priest. It was cute. And the kids loved it! In fact, I treated them to a Wendy's lunch ... now that I think about it, we could've had KFC.

I'll add the Kk collage once we get to it, which we will ... ever.

Merry Christmas!

Desks, too! Thanks, Tante Ginny & Uncle Ryan! + scissors from Santa!

J j

+ flan in honor of the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe

Look at the Jesus-faces they drew! Super cute, right? Paul's in on top, and Ada's is below. Apparently that is their signature face-draw because later in the week, they drew the same thing on Shrinky-Dink material, and they're now hanging on our Christmas tree - love!

Skipped Thursday because I wasn't feelin' it. That's allowed, right? And then Friday got super busy, but we made Jell-O! So we finished our letter J week on, uh, Monday, which was a very productive start to letter Kk.

I i

 I for innocence and icing sugar, and ice cubes and coincidentally also the Immaculate Conception!

^ what homeschool looks like on the unorganized days...

Thursday: What happens when primary-colored ice cubes melt together? 

 "Whoooa!" closely followed by "So what happens when we mix all of these together?" Hooray for self-science-ing ;)

And then we went to Mass for the Immaculate Conception at the Jesuit Immaculate Conception Church downtown - it was beautiful, and the kids were fabulous. Probably because there was ice cream involved ... we had ice cream sundaes for dessert to celebrate.

They've really gotten into "Collage Day" aka Friday, particularly Ada. I think they like cutting things, but we've just had my grown-up scissors; I may have reason to think Santa might help out in that department *nose tap*. There was a bit of drama surrounding the pieces of the tiny name ice cream cones in that left photo ^ because we'd started it Wednesday and then left it all to come back to after naps. Much later, Paul saw Ada with Mama's scissors and lots of tiny ice cream cone-looking fragments. Sigh. Some space (like, 2 days) and more construction paper averted tragedy.

H h

Make that St. Helena

Insert very silly versions of "If you're happy/healthy, and you know it" here...

We added just one silly "H" activity: watching the HAPPY music video for a smidge of a dance party.

And the honey-lemon butter was delicious.

G g

 First attempt at trying to keep things sort of on track for a holiday week. I'd say we passed, but only just. In fact, this morning while returning the "G" books to the library, Paul said, "That was quick! We didn't get to read lots of them." The idea was to read them in the car, but the kids wanted to "read" them by themselves. So before running to the library, we had a marathon of about 6 books. It was

Green Eggs & Ham

Good things for which we're grateful are gifts from God ... listed on grapes.

I promise these faces are put on! Ada was a giggly mess looking at herself like this.

F f

Bonus for choosing St. Francis of Assisi: singing "Make me a channel of your peace" each day. Lots.

 

Wednesday was Field Trip day! We went to Mass at St. Francis of Assisi's church (Paul: "We're going to ASSISI?!" Me: "*Sigh* No, son. We're going uptown. I wish.") and then made a trip to the zoo! Almost as cool as going to Italy, yes? Since it was a special field trip and not just a "regular" trip to the zoo, we did the carousel - oOOoooooOooOOOoo! Ada was almost scared but held it together. 

And an extra go-fish game we hadn't planned on but had to add once they saw Kate & Maddie playing!