Weekly Wrap-Up - October 27

It was a BUSY week last week! Sunday started a new unit for Little Bit and E's preschool. This unit, is all about water, so to kick things off, we created an "ocean" in the entrance to our school room, complete with a bridge to cross the ocean into the room. It's hard to get a decent picture of it, but it's pretty fun. And sneaks a little balance beam practice into each day before we sit down for circle time :) That meshes nicely with the Brain Gym exercises I've been having them do at the beginning of circle time.  After the kids' had their fun surprise of the ocean and bridge, I got my own surprise as we started circle time on Sunday. We heard E's little brother, J, outside and he came in and said he was ready to start joining us for circle time again! When E and J first started joining us for school, they both came, but J (who was 3 1/2 at the time), just wasn't ready, so his mom and I agreed that there's no reason to push school on someone so little (we initially offered it so he wouldn't feel left out), and gave him the choice, and he chose to stay home, and just come over and join us during outside playtime.  I guess more recently, he'd been saying more often that he wanted to come to circle time, and Sunday, he declared that "now that I'm 4" (Sunday was his birthday), he was coming to circle time, and he did :) He did GREAT! I was amazed at the difference a few months, and it being his choice, made :) He was not only sitting (relatively) still, but was bound and determined to join in with everything, even repeating all of our "We Choose Virtues" cards after the other kids, since they've memorized them, and he hasn't.

Sunday afternoon, the girls and I enjoyed an afternoon at the corn maze.

Monday was J's birthday party at Ballocity.  I didn't get any pictures, but all the kids had a BLAST! We stayed until suppertime, and even the big girls were EXHAUSTED by the time we left :)  Lexie even asked to go to bed half an hour before "bedtime" that night LOL.

Tuesday we began Christmas in October . . . Last year we were able to review a "Once-a-Week Unit Study" on Knights and Nobles, and thoroughly enjoyed it. So when the company contacted me about reviewing their new Christmas unit, with the "catch" being that we'd need to review it NOW so that the review would be posted in time for customers to order it to use this December, my girls jumped with excitement at the idea :)  A fun bonus, no worries about finding the books in the library this time of year LOL.  So, since it's designed to be done Once a Week, we've designated Tuesday as our "Christmas day" and we're having great fun learning about Christmas traditions from different countries and doing fun things like making hot chocolate and watching Christmas movies :) 

Friday we spent the day visiting Rodney's mom (Grandmom).  Little Bit was thrilled to get to play with glitter glue. And all 3 girls enjoyed playing Go Fish with Grandmom.

Sabbath, in Sabbath School, the story was about Peter in prison, so on Thursday we stopped by the church to set up a "prison" as part of our Sabbath School room. The rest of the front of the room looks like this:

 Then off to the left we added a "jail" by setting up the plywood "barn" and adding electrical tape "bars" to the window. We also added a barred window to the (windowless) side of the barn, but I didn't get a picture of that. Sabbath morning before the other kids got there Ashlyn had to "test it out" LOL.

The kids had fun with the Sabbath School program. They got to help act out the story, complete with wrapping a chain around Peter's (Lexie's) wrists while she was in jail :)

Sabbath afternoon we visited Ephrata Cloister. It's been on my "places to visit" list for several years now, but I knew that the PA Heritage Membership applied to the fee there, so have been waiting until we get that membership. We got it in anticipation of visiting some sites on our western PA trip (and then never managed to actually visit those sites, sigh . . .) so now that we HAVE the membership, I'm determined to visit the places on my list that it will get us into. And Ephrata Cloister seemed like a good way to spend a nice, fall, Sabbath afternoon. While I knew from the website that it was a historic site where a religious group lived way back when (in the 1700s), I didn't realize until we went on the tour there, that they actually kept Saturday as Sabbath. Some of their other ideas were . . . far fetched . . . IMO, but it was interesting to hear about a group of Sabbath keepers from so long ago.

 Another part of their beliefs was that too much sleep was bad, so their "beds" were narrow wooden benches with wood blocks for "pillows". Now they have one that people can try out, so Little Bit checked it out while we were there. She declared it to be "weird".  The big girls said it wasn't as uncomfortable as they thought it would be :) They didn't go for my suggestion of saving space in their room by getting rid of the beds and having wood benches instead though LOL.

We finished off our week with popcorn and hot chocolate while we all watched Master Chef Junior (recorded from the night before) on Saturday night.

The big girls' other excitement this week was the arrival of their early Hanukkah present!  Much to their excitement, their sewing machine arrived on Tuesday.  They had a corner of their room all set up ready for sewing, so as soon as I had time, we unpacked their sewing machine and figured out how to wind the bobbins, and thread the machine (much easier than my old machine!).  Then I suggested they sew a few bathroom wipes* to get a feel for things, and then turned them loose to get busy making doll clothes (be looking for our review of Rosie's Doll Clothes Patterns, in the next few days).  They're full of plans for all the sewing they're going to do, so we shall see :)

I couldn't resist snapping a picture of Ashlyn on Sabbath morning before we left for church. Something about her hair up, and the cut of her dress, there was NO hint of "little girl" left in her, sigh . . . my babies are growing up!

* When the twins were potty training, it was only logical to continue using the flannel "wipes" that I'd use as part of our cloth diaper routine, to wipe their hineys.  Once I got used to the idea, it is a much more comfortable option, adds very little laundry, and saves us going through the copious amounts of toilet paper that a family full of girls would otherwise go through. The wash routine is no different than it was for cloth diapers, and only adds one load per week. BUT most of our wipes are the ones I bought to use for cloth diapering when the twins were babies. 10 1/2 years later, they are literally falling apart, so I figured making a few new ones with some scraps of flannel in our fabric box was the perfect way for the girls to get used to the new sewing machine. I intend to continue having them "practice" by trying out new stitches and such that way as well. Woo-hoo!