School has been busy this month. Kamy keeps me on my toes coming up with new concepts and challenges for her to work on. She doesn’t like to do the same thing two days in a row, nor once every three days, so I have a rotating assortment of concepts and activities to work on daily. My goal is at least one thing for reading, writing, and math daily. We’re doing school every day, including weekends, which seems to be working really well for us. Reading is going very well and we made it through lesson 71 in her reading curriculum by the end of November. This month Kamy worked on: identifying nouns and verbs, mixed addition and subtraction with single digits, telling time, measuring with a ruler, reading three digit numbers, greatest and least in a sequence, skip counting, reading a thermometer, order least to greatest, identifying and writing fractions, fill in bar graphs, statements vs questions, and months of the year. She’s doing a fabulous job and I’m so grateful that I’m able to homeschool her. I overheard Kamy working though dividing in halves, starting with 12 and going to 6, then three. From there she said, “You can’t make three in half.” I said there was still a way to split it in two and she figured out that it would be one and a half! I’m so proud of this girl.
Kamy and Daddy are making great progress on preparing for the 5K in March. They usually run three days per week and are gradually going farther each run and shortening their walks. I’m so excited to cheer them on this spring. Kamy has really been enjoying the one-on-one time with Daddy and has done very little complaining about it. Kamy loves to talk while they run, so that helps pass the time and keep their minds off running. She’s a little chatterbox!
Kamy still loves having new responsibilities. She takes the mail out to the box and gets it in the afternoon. She also loves to help in the kitchen and is always asking for the opportunity to help. For some reason, Kamy’s had a rash of broken plates lately. There have been three plates dropped in November! The first was genuinely an accident, but then she started to psych herself out about it and it happened twice more. It doesn’t help her chances that she usually balances the plate on her hands instead of actually holding onto it. So now we say, “Use your thumbs!”
We’ve found a local homeschool group that meets weekly at a park. It is a small group, but the kids have really enjoyed getting to know the other homeschooled children and seeing consistent faces each week. And it’s a nice break for me and a chance to talk with other moms instead of always fielding kids seeking input. Go play!
Kamy lost her first tooth this month too! She didn’t even notice when it happened, but I noticed when I went to brush her teeth and it wasn’t there! There’s no tooth fairy in our house, but she was excited to hit this milestone.
Kamy and Caden both helped me make the place card holders for Thanksgiving. I sent them out in search of large, nice pine cones with a flat bottom. They came back with a whole bin full — there are advantages to living in the piney woods! We hot glued ribbons on the bottom of the pine cones, collected colorful leaves from outside, and Kamy wrote everyone’s names on them. Kamy also helped me set the table and arrange the flowers.
Thanksgiving was so much fun this year! This was our first chance to host Thanksgiving and we made full use of the house. Garin and Jess came out for the whole weekend, while Payton and Corinne came for a couple of days with their dog Winston. Granpops and Gina came out Thanksgiving Day, while Oma, Opa, and Regine were here on Friday and Saturday and Min stayed Saturday and Sunday. We enjoyed lasagna on Thursday and had a full spread with fried turkey on Saturday. Everyone had plenty to eat! We had a full house, but there were beds for everyone (except Regine one night, but she had the kids’ two small mattresses end to end). We definitely had a full house! We were sad that neither Nana, nor Grandmommy and Grandbobby could make it, but we’ll find a time to have them out for the day too. This house was built for entertaining, and we were so glad to be the gathering point for our family this year. It was even cold enough to have a fire!
While we had everyone at the house for Thanksgiving, we took the opportunity to take a family photo or seven.
