I have been simultaneously struggling with a severe cold…and planning DecemberTerm. Nothing is ever as simple as we anticipate, is it? Anyhow, plans must be finalized regardless of how we feel, no? So here I am. I hope these are still acceptable to me when I’m feeling more energetic!
For those of you who are new around here, we call the days between Thanksgiving and Christmas DecemberTerm. It might be important to know that as context for this post.
The Circle Time Plans
The Resources
Books
- The Jesse Tree
- The Story of Christmas
- An Amish Christmas
- The Crippled Lamb
- A Christmas Carol
- The Tailor of Gloucester
- A Wreath of Christmas Legends {this contains the Phyllis McGinley poem for memorization}
- The Best of O. Henry {contains The Gift of the Magi}
Ahem.
Other Plans
I try to make DecemberTerm very relaxed and basic so that there is more time for baking and reading aloud and helping others and field trips. Because of the way the dates fall this year, we’ll be doing most of our baking during the week before Christmas rather than during DecemberTerm.
With that said, my Year Four student will be doing one reading and narration per day, plus math pages. He never fails to do lots of reading in his free time, so I’m going to give him the time. We’ll also complete some unfinished business, which is to say one or two lessons of Plutarch and also Lesson 5 of Visual Latin. I also postponed our Shakespeare night until DecemberTerm because I had mentally reserved Thanksgiving week, and Si’s mom came to visit instead.
My Year One student will also do one reading per day, plus half a page of math, and also a reading lesson. And if I know my older preschooler well enough, she’ll insist on reading lessons, too.
What About You?
Have you posted your DecemberTerm {or whatever your family calls it} on your blog? If so, link it in the comments so we can all come glean ideas!
9 Comments
Thank you Brandy for clarifying. Picky food-eating is not the issue right now for my oldest, but I like the ideas of gratitude and thinking about others esp.in regards to gifts.
Heather, Thanks! I wrote the manners study myself, but not this year. It is a combination of two different past years, and I’m just rerunning it because besides my oldest, no one remembers. My children had food allergies for years, and even though they have been *well* for years now, they can still be weird (and rude) about food. These manners are very specific to the struggles of some or all of my children. Allergies are interesting–my two youngest, who never really had any to speak of–are way more normal when it comes to food. 🙂
Ps. Just to clarify…I do not always ask all of the questions. They are just there so that I can remember my line of thought when I chose the verse and manner. Sometimes the conversation happens naturally, and sometimes I need the prompts to get us going.
Brandy, very nice ideas. Did you write the manners study yourself or did you glean that from somewhere?
I hope you feel better soon.
Brandy,
I look forward to reading your thoughts, as there are so many different options out there, it is hard to choose one, especially when one knows next to nothing about learning Latin! Thanks again!
Julie
Dawn: I look forward to reading yours!
Julie: Welcome to Afterthoughts! You know, someone else emailed me about that over the weekend. I think I’ll post my reply as a post later in the week…hope you don’t mind waiting a couple days. 🙂
Brandy,
I am a new reader to your blog! Thank you for your posts. I have just started down the Latin road, and I wondered what your thoughts are on Visual Latin? How long have you been using it? Have you tried other programs, or it this it? In short, your review!!
Thanks SO much!!
Julie in St. Louis
I posted mine tonight …
The poem is called Story for an Educated Child. I think the children will love it, and the connection to The Tailor of Gloucester is there–it’ll be interesting to see if the kids make it. In the poem, though, the animals only speak Latin.
What poem are you doing? These look great, I did (most) of mine today, too. I need to make some more ornaments 🙂
I’ll probably post it tonight.