I love the week after Thanksgiving. I am one of those people who will not put up a Christmas decoration until Thanksgiving is over, but the minute it is over I can’t wait to turn on the Christmas music and pull out those decorations!
The girls were so excited to find our new bins of holiday books around the house. Even before breakfast they crawled up into the chair together to look at some of the books.
We were busy decorating most of the weekend, but we had a lot of fun. Tinker likes to touch all of the ornaments on the small tree. It is mostly full of ornaments the girls have made and gifts from our wonderful Christmas-loving Grammie.
She also loves the big tree. We keep jingle bells all over the bottom of it for the kids to play with. Every morning she climbed up into this chair to sit and stare at the lights.
Lovey enjoyed her first hot chocolate of the season!
We put together our Christmas sensory bin, and the kids had a lot of fun playing with it all week. On Monday I will be sharing more details about the bin and ways we will use it throughout the month.
There was lots of Christmas pretend play all week long.
I think Lovey was most relieved to find her lost blankie! It has been missing for almost two weeks. She remembered hiding it (from her sister, who technically received the blankie as a gift from Grandma!), but she couldn’t remember where. Everyone in the house searched for it! Finally she found it buried inside the toy kitchen well-hidden inside a closed container. Thankfully, we will all sleep better again now that blankie is back!
School? Yes, we did many school activities this week. In a way I felt like we were doing a bit too much between holiday activities and school plans, so that made me wonder how everyone else works out their plans in December. If you homeschool, do you coordinate your schedule so that you are mostly finished for the semester, or are you still working diligently in all subject areas? My kids are still preschool age which gives us a lot of flexibility, but I am wondering what most homeschooling families do. I also recognize that I plan way too much for each week, and that is something I hope to work on starting in January.
This week was the beginning of our three-week unit on the forest. We have been slowly making our way around the world this year briefly visiting each continent. This month we will explore basic information about forests, learn about some of the forest animals from Europe, and learn about some of the forest animals from North America.
The kids were very excited to open their “surprise box.” They get excited each time they see it near our calendar. This time it contained animals and trees from some of the Safari Toobs.
Silliness and giggles all around when we stopped to play with our rubber gloves before our science experiment! We tried to find out how animals stay warm in the winter.
We also learned a lot about hedgehogs and made some hedgehog crafts that I will share more about next week. (Did I mention it was 80 degrees here one day this week? Lovey didn’t hesitate to pull out summer clothes, but now we are back to “our” colder temperatures…65!)
Even with all of the excitement this week my favorite moments were the last few minutes before my girls went to sleep. Sometimes I can get so focused on the “to do” list that I zoom through moments and forget to stop and savor them. Lucky for me, my girls always have a way of reminding me what is most important.
Lately Tinker has become fascinated with the stars. As I go through the hustle and bustle of the bedtime routine I forget one new, important step, but she doesn’t! EVERY night just as I start singing her lullaby, she squeals, “Side! Tars! Tars!” (Toddler for Outside! Stars! Stars!) I smile as we quickly head out the back door for just one peak. Lovey always joins us, and we all just stand there for a minute or two to marvel at the stars and the beautiful, big moon out this week.
I tried to take a picture of the moon, but learning how to really use my camera is still lingering on that “to do” list I mentioned. Instead I just borrowed a beautiful picture from Microsoft Office and stayed a bit longer to enjoy the calm and silence outside with my girls.
I hope you had a wonderful week!
You might also enjoy some of the learning activities shared in this week’s posts.
K is for Key Reading Activities
Our Simple Advent Calendar Ideas and Tips for Creating Your Own
Savannah
Oh your girls look so happy. Thanks for sharing this post with Its a Wrap. I hope you’ll return this week.
Shaunna
Thank you! I’ll be sure to head back.