Collage Friday

We had a busy, fun, and memory-making week around here. On Sunday the girls sang in our church's annual children's Christmas choir. Kaitlyn also played a piano piece for the prelude and both girls had tiny solos in "How Great Our Joy." Later on Sunday afternoon, Kaitlyn spent some time decorating a cake for our Senior Pastor's birthday and our staff Christmas party at our church. She always has fun coming up with decorating ideas. She still says she wants to own a cakes shop and call it "Kate's Kakes" one day. She is dressed in all red and white in the picture below because it was candy cane night at AWANA and she was ready to go. 

Monday was an "out of the box" school day. We went into the office with my husband, due to the staff Christmas party, but instead of sitting in a room at church to do school work, we decided to go to Starbucks, drink warm drinks and work on spelling, writing, and math. We also made a stop at a local library we like to visit when we are near our church. I shared this with my mother-in-law and she asked me if the employees of Starbucks were okay with us taking up a table to do school work. I don't mean to sound uncaring, but it honestly doesn't bother me to take my home educated children outside of the home Monday-Friday during school hours. I answer questions as they come and make no excuses for why we do things the way we do and usually have very encouraging conversations with people in our community. How about you? Are you comfortable getting out of the house during school hours or do you prefer staying closer to home?

On Monday afternoon, after the staff Christmas party, we took our daughter to her weekly piano lesson and then headed to Hershey, PA. We planned on visiting Chocolate World like we do every year at this time since moving to PA, but they closed at 5:00 and we pulled into the driveway at 5:15! We were all very disappointed and my husband and I felt foolish for not checking the times, but every year we had gone in the evening. However, there is only one week during December when they are open until 9 pm. I guess we scheduled our trip a little too early this year. We saved the night by promising the children to return to Chocolate World when their Grandma and Grandpa come to visit because they wanted to experience Chocolate World too. We ate dinner at Red Robin, visited a cool drive through light display, and then stopped by Bass Pro on our way home. Even though the night started out with disappointment, we still had a lot of fun!

This week in Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day, we read about "Matching and Hatching." The children LOVED this activity you see pictured below. I LOVE the expressions on Tyler and Kaitlyn's faces! We cracked open an egg, dumped out the contents so we could feel the air pocket inside and also peel away the inner membrane. The kids had so much fun, I think we cracked open a half dozen eggs!

This week the older two children read "Christmas in the Trenches" which I intended to read aloud to them, but they found it in the library basket and read it before I realized, which I'm okay with. I learned about this book from Sarah Clarkson's "Read for the Heart." When I read the description of this book, I knew my son would enjoy it because he loves reading all things military. We finished "The House Without A Christmas Tree" this week. This is a sweet story, but I do have to warn you there are at least three curse words. This was a read aloud, so I was able to substitute more appropriate words. Next week we are going to start "The Family Under the Bridge." 

How was your week? I am linking this post up with Collage Friday hosted by Homegrown Learners. It's a fun community where we share about our weeks and share fun photo collages. I encourage you to check it out. You will be sure to find ideas and encouragement.