amandaspace1330

Merry Christmas! We had a lovely time visiting family and celebrating the birth of Jesus. The week before Christmas we read the story Ordinary Baby, Extraordinary Gift, by Gloria Gaither. This book came with a cd to listen to the story and the song that goes along with it. I wanted to spend a week learning about Christmas, with the story of Jesus as the main emphasis, and I really enjoyed this story. Vocabulary opportunities abound in Mrs. Gaither's story and song, but I did not print out a vocab list this week. We discussed some of the words that the children did not understand. We started with the title words ordinary and extraordinary. Our hymn of the week was Hark the Herald Angels Sing and we continued to read from the book of Luke in addition to our advent verses each morning. In History/Geography we learned about the Pennsylvania Dutch Christmas traditions as well as Christmas traditions from Colonial Williamsburg. We also learned about Martin Luther, the theologian. ...

The past two weeks our literature books have been about Border Collies. The first week we read,   Floss, by Kim Lewis and then this past week we read Calico Dorsey, by Susan Lendroth.  Both of these stories were about loyalty, hard work, and the friendship between dogs and people. Floss is set in Scotland and in the story, Floss transitions from being a pet in town to working as a sheep dog on a farm. Vocabulary from Floss : drifting, travelled, herd, heather. For Social Studies/Geography we learned about Scotland and balancing work and play.We also had opportunity this week to learn about Soccer. In Science we learned about Border Collies and memory. In Art we practiced Drawing Border Collies using a drawing book about dogs and cats to help us, and we made our own soccer balls out of whatever we could find around the house. They didn't last long, but it was fun to challenge the children's industrious and creative side. We learned a handful...

This year I was able to read a few books. The first book I read was Divine Detours, by Roger Clement.  Divine Detours website This is my Aunt Roxanne's story written by her second husband. It was a book that challenged me spiritually and was also an emotional read, for me. The other two books I read simultaneously (mostly while sitting on the lid of the toilet during my daughter's bath time). The first: H is for Hawk, by Helen Macdonald I saw on the shelf in the gift shop at Hawk Mountain and promptly checked it from the library.  This story is another story of loss and living through grief. Helen tells her journey training a Goshawk while recovering from the death of her father. I really enjoyed Ms. Macdonald's writing. However, she included a lot of biographical information about T.H. White. I did not enjoy this portion of the book and I skimmed/skipped these paragraphs. Overall it was an interesting read. The second book was lent to me by my sister. It was last year...