As part of home school Emily and I do calendar every time. We notice the upcoming events and holidays, count how many days left in the month, figure out exactly how old she is on that day, etc. We have been learning some cool stuff about holidays I typically don't celebrate.
Rosh Hashanah Sept 9th and Yom Kippur Sept 18th.
Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year and
Yom Kippur is the Day of Atonement filled with fasting. We checked out a few books and rented a video from the library and Emily got inspired. She wanted to set her 10 goals for the new year too. Here's what she came up with as her Jewish New Year's goals. She hung up her list so she could remember.
1) Be mise To Frenss {Be nice to friends}
2) Hellq mom 8 dad owt {Help mom & dad out}
3) Be ciend {Be kind}
4) Chaej my buthr's diepr {Change my brother's diaper}
5) Do the dishis
6) Hellp my sisdr owt
7) Feed my buthr
8) Play with my bruthr
9) Play with my frens
10) Play with sisir
Ten cmamins {10 Commandments}
All Saints Day (Nov 1)
A Catholic holiday of celebrating ancestors. We talked about our ancestors; primarily my grandparents. We went on my grandma's facebook page and checked out her pics. We read a book from the library and noticed all the food they make to honor their ancestors. We celebrated our family [basically I cried happy/sad tears].
Veteran's Day (Nov 11)
Both girls were with me and we checked out the VA's website. We watched a video, we played military themed kid computer games. The girls they printed out medals and then we colored. I wrote a letter and we will be mailing them out soon. We found out that the military celebrates every 11-11 at 11am. We had also set up a lunch date with a friend at the same time.
Emily wrote to my cousin who is a naval Vet. The medal says BRAVERY. Her letter:
Dear Sarah, I hope you had a good time in the war. Love Emily and Maegan {FYI- She didn't serve in the war}
For homeschool I teach Emily on Monday and Wednesday mornings and take her to Adelaide for lunch at 12:15. Thursday I keep her home all day and Ashley joins us. Thursday seems to have a lot of fighting, which is something you don't get in a classroom of 1. Aaron knows when I am teaching and I think he hates it. He knows he is getting the backseat and he knows there is not much in the homeschool room that he can play with. He likes to push buttons on the printer or computer, empty all the things out of the cupboard (boxes of checks, stapler, CDs), or eat markers, crayons, pencil erasers, paper. He will only be pacified with coloring on paper or me reading him a story for a few minutes. A neighbor asked Emily if she liked homeschool. Of course I perked up to hear her answer. She said she did and her favorite part was reading a story and eating a snack. We always have an agenda 1) pray 2) calendar and then any number of things. We always have recess and snack w/ a story. We read Doctor Dolittle and are now on Huck Finn. We also have writing in a journal, math (Saxon workbook pages, shapes, counting, money, playing store, telling time), handwriting (usually not too much, but mostly her numbers), language structure (apostrophes, Explode the Code workbook), computer games (from a list my teacher mom), science (she is basically in her own world of creating science projects for herself every day), plants, etc. Basically whatever the heck I feel like talking about, we do it. I love it most of the time. I wonder if I'll do it next year. Or for Ashley. Then I remind myself that I don't have to know that now.
The girls asked me if they could draw moustaches on themselves to be detectives. I came down later to find them looking like this. 
Playing Yahtzee one night as a family. 
Friday Dec. 17th Ashley's last day of preschool she came home with her nose painted red and a pair of hands on her head to look like antlers.
Monday night Dec. 13th we went to our neighborhood shopping plaza for some holiday fun. We took a horse drawn carriage ride, ate cookies, popcorn and egg nog, and got to sit on Santa's lap. Ash wanted nothing to do with him. Emily asked for an American Girl doll. Aaron was chillin.
