Day 1

Sweet Potato's journal entry:

"11/30/09 Today I got to go to Mrs. Patty's. She taught me how to use both mixers. We made mints and nut bars and I can't remember the rest, but we made four recipes. It was fun! We even went to a store and I bought a Colonial Times book (Jalapeno got Bakugan, Pineapple got a car)."

She got to hang out with Mrs. Patty for the whole day! Besides the cooking they did, they also watched a couple of movies, played hide and seek (Howie the dog played too) and generally she had a good time being the only kid in the house.

After Jalapeno's reading lesson (he was reading some short sentences today!!) the boys and I had Mrs. Allison, Seth and Paige over, and we made bunches of monster cookies, some peanut butter cups and some meringue cookies.







Once Daddy got home, he and the kids worked on a center piece for our Christmas table...they are not done yet, but it looks pretty cool!

Schooling in December...

I was talking to my sister the other day, and we both decided that we are closet "unschoolers"...we often do spend the day cooking or building mud flats out of pudding and marshmallows or a day running errands where we practice math as we choose each item from the shelf...but there is something in us that just won't let us put down that checklist of subjects that need to be covered.

So, in the spirit of really enjoying our time as a family this December, we are embarking upon a new course of study from today, until January 4th, when we will hit the books, and hopefully still be able to keep some of the fun in our day! And to help us out, my parents are joining us for two weeks, and Daddy has a nice long break from work between Christmas and New Years, so he can join in the fun too!!



I decided that every day, Sweet Potato is going to do her math lesson, her flash cards and a good journal entry. Jalapeno is going to do a reading lesson. And from there on...fun, fun, fun...and in the process, lots of learning!!

Here are the options we have to choose from:

Art - Sweet Potato has a great drawing book about horses that we never seem to get to...so I am going to ask Grandpa (who is a great artist) to help her through that book.

Science - a whole day doing science with water, or air, or in the kitchen. We usually read the book, but now, we are going to do ALL the experiments!



Cooking - there's always a lot of that going on around here...but how fun to get to cook with Grammie and for our friends! And Sweet Potato is going to spend the day with one of my friends, cooking sweets for a party...oh, soooo fun!!

Sewing - again, looking for some help from Grammie here. One of the projects I would like to do is teach Sweet Potato to piece a quilt top for our group Crafts with a Cause, who make blankets for foster kids.

Crafts, crafts and more crafts! Sweet Potato went through all our Family Fun magazines and marked a whole lot of things she wants to make, so we are going to try and do them ALL!

Games - I moved them all to the school room, where we now have a table big enough for everyone, so I am hoping we can play games every night after dinner. Oh, and puzzles!!!

Field Trips - a few places we would like to go: Whit's End; Littleton History Museum; DMNS; the Aquarium; letterboxing; and Night in Bethlehem - most of these are free, or we have a membership, thanks to super nice Aunt's and Uncles!!

Choir and band concerts - one of my MOPS mom's husbands is a principal near here and he gave me a schedule of all the Jeffco concerts for this season...we are going to try and go to a few of them.

So that is our plan, and we will try and keep the blog updated, so you can follow the fun!