Another WAM Concert in the Books

One evening, Nana, Caroline and I were driving to the grocery store.  Along the way, we were looking at Christmas lights.  Caroline kept saying that we were "non-decorators" because we didn't put up any lights or decorations outside.  It was cute at first, but then she kept saying it over and over.  We're non-decorators. We're non-decorators.  We don't decorate.  It made me want to go out and buy some lights and throw them on our bushes.  Caroline did not inherit my "non-decorator" gene, she loves all colors, all accessories, and lots of sparkle.  She's even been playing "fashion" with her dolls.  She's going to be our fashionista.  Hopefully she'll help me become a little less monochromatic.

Caroline's fashion sense was appreciated by her peers at WAM.  We were practicing earlier this week for the WAM concert this weekend.  Caroline put one of her pink crystal dollar store necklaces on her and the other blue one on me.  I had five kindergartners that night compliment me on my necklace.  One boy actually asked if he could have it.

The kids all impressed me this week with their conversational skills.  Caroline and Nana talking about Christmas lights was a fun one to listen to.  On another car ride, Josiah and Nana were talking about books and which ones they liked and favorite authors.  It was great.  Henry had good conversations with Grandad, too.  They have far surpassed me in the carrying-on-a-conversation--department and for that I am very grateful!

Thursday was our last day of CC until January.  It is so nice to have this break so we can focus on all of our other school work as well as catching up on our CC memory work.  In Josiah's Essentials class, they had a cupcake party.  It was presented as an example of Chart A which is about sentence classification.  Basically, there are 4 sentence structures (simple, compound, complex, compound-complex), 4 purposes (declarative, interrogative, exclamatory, imperative), & 7 patterns (subject-verb; subject-verb-direct object; etc.).  Multiplied all together there are 112 different sentence types.  This was illustrated with 4 types of frosting, 4 types of toppings, and 7 flavors of cupcakes.  The kids made a valiant effort at making all 112 types of cupcake possibilities.  Josiah had two bowls in front of him with a cupcake in each, frosting, and a lot of toppings.  He pointed to a kid with three cupcakes in one bowl as a valid reason for going up for thirds.  I don't think so.

Caroline's CC tutor gave all the kids in her class a little goody bag.  In the bag was a little plastic guitar.  Caroline has been using it as a phone and has had very long conversations with unknown friends ever since.  She often says, "Yeah.  Uh huh.  Okay.  I'm busy now.  Okay."

Josiah attended his last birthday party of the year.  At this point I think he must be the only child left in his class who hasn't turned ten.  This party was at a laser tag place.  Josiah had never done it before so I was interested to see how he'd like it.  He came out of his first battle all smiles.  He loved it.  After his third battle, he came out and said, "I got 16th place!  I made the board!"  Apparently there was a score board and he had made it.  On the drive home he told me about an encounter with a couple of teenagers.  They both shot Josiah and temporarily disabled his gun (happens when you're shot).  So, in response, Josiah pledged his loyalty to them and as soon as his gun powered back up, Josiah shot them both.  He was quite proud of himself.  (I questioned the morality of it.)  It was the latest birthday party we had ever attended - we didn't get home until after 10 p.m.  We insisted Josiah sleep-in to recover.  He slept all the way in to 6:30 a.m.  Needless to say, he was in bed a little after 7 tonight.

Our church was all decked out with their Christmas decorations this morning.  We took a few pictures on our walk to the sanctuary.

Later this afternoon the kids had their WAM concert.

Caroline's kindergarten class was front and center. 

Todd was able to get a few good pictures of her singing.  Henry did woodworking this semester, so they each got to take home planters that they had worked on throughout the Fall.  Josiah did photography and they showed some of his pictures taken around the church campus.  They all did a good job.  During the last song the lyrics were, "Take the shackles off my feet so I can dance.  I'm gonna praise Him.  I'm gonna praise Him."  There were movements to go with the lyrics.  Henry decided that, for the concert, he was going to change the movements, so that when they sang, "so I can dance," Henry flossed.  Flossing.  The latest dance craze among all 6-8 yr olds.

This was one of the planters Henry helped to make (they all helped make all of them).  I really like it, so now we'll have to go buy ourselves a plant.

It is hard to believe December has already arrived.  This was one of the quickest autumns ever!