Holiday Time

It's been a pretty chill December so far. Laurel and I read a Christmas Carol and finished her unit on the Industrial Revolution (2 thumbs down to child labor and debtor's prison, says Laurel). We watched the Muppet version, and I wanted to watch some other ones, but my kids are so freaked out about ghosts! They even considered the Muppet version to be too scary. We discussed the book in our Aunt Niece Book Club, which meets once a month on zoom, and one of the highlights of the month. Thank you so much to my aunts for showing up every month for it, since like April 2020. 

We have been doing lots of hiking and playing outside with our homeschool friends. I love the fact that we can be outside during the day when the sun is out, especially on these extremely short days. 

We are reading Heartwood Hotel for Brave Writer. So far, it's a really sweet novel and Max is totally into it. Marko stole my kindle and read the whole thing in one sitting, which he is not supposed to do. It's supposed to be a read aloud, where you discuss it along the way and do things like Copywork and little writing projects based on what you just read. Oh well. He is listening along again as I read it aloud to Max at breakfast time.

Marko is hyper focused on Minecraft. He starts a video call almost every day and various friends join in. Some of the play gets a little on the murderous side (!) but it seems to be a good way for the kids to practice working out conflict. He has a google doc where he logs all of his research on ways to build things and other cheats, which he shares with the other kids. I like that they all look forward to connecting at the end of the day and it kind of reminds me of daily happy hours with friends when we were in our twenties.

Laurel is working on a gingerbread house. The first iteration experienced a catastrophic collapse. She enlisted M's help on a second one, and they are busily measuring angles and cutting out a new template. On Brave Writer this month, the focus was on project time and it's so cool to witness Laurel's project unfolding. In the beginning it was all recipe research, and whimsical sketches. Actually tackling the baking and assembly herself was pretty stress inducing, but she talked herself off a few emotional ledges. There are crumbs everywhere, royal icing everywhere, sketches and crumpled cardboard, and baking pans and wet rags. It's a hot mess down there. 

We have some shopping to finish up and will be smoking a turkey later this week to take to my parents' house. My brother and Laurel are working on a "Christmas Light Bingo" driving tour that we will all do sometime on Christmas Eve. 

I love how relaxed our schedule is these days. I don't miss being busy at all.