Week of Dec. 9th

         Snow in Missouri is a new experience for me and I must say that starting off with a snow day was not what I expected.  Hopefully you all got to enjoy some required time inside with your kiddos on Friday.  I'm trying to get a little jump start on the week here with an early blog post.

Tomorrow we will catch up from Friday on:
Memory
Spelling
Santa's Workshop

Thanksgiving Projects
The video links for all the projects will be up on the Social Studies page.

Handwriting
My goal is to have all the kids writing their homework in cursive at the start of 3rd quarter.  This means that we are skipping a few pages in their books so we can review capital letters.  If you have the chance to write things in cursive at home, please do.  This might help them panic a bit less when they have to do everything in cursive.

Advent
Service at Concordia at 7pm on Mon. 12/16 (Please have your child seated with me in our class section 5-10 minutes early.)

Book It!!
I sent home the December calendar last week.  I had about 10 kids earn their pizza certificate for November.  Remember they need to read at least 20 min. a night 5 days out of each week.

Kirk Care
We need to have all the donated items for Kirk Care by this Wed. 12/11.  If our campus reaches 1,000 items by Wednesday the kids will earn a casual day for Fri. 12/20.

       I'm sure that I am probably missing something in this blog post because it's Christmas time and there is always so much.  Don't worry though, I will put things up as soon as I find out about them.  In the meantime, enjoy you're last 2 weeks of school and crazy schedules before Christmas gets here.
       I've been talking with the kids about how Advent is the time to prepare for Jesus.  It sometimes seems that there is so much shopping, cooking, giving, driving, whining, and fussing going on that we can forget to (or sometimes not even have time to) look at Jesus.  I am guilty of it too.  Fortunately for you and me, your kiddos are great at remembering.  After a crazy day at school we always pray.  There are days when I am in a rush and tempted to say the Lord's Prayer myself to speed them along.  Of course they all HATE when they don't get to pray out loud, so I give in and let us be late.  It's in those moments that someone, without fail, prays "Dear Jesus, thank you for dying for all of us," or "Thanks for my teacher and mom and dad," or "Thanks for a good day and please help us have a good night too with our families."  These are such simple things for them to be saying and yet I didn't want to take the time to let them say it.  So...if you took the time to read all of this, I challenge you to listen, read, talk to, and pray with your kids this Christmas.  They will mess up and a lot of times be the cause of all your crazy days.  But they will also be the ones that God uses to help you see HIM day in and day out.  God's grace and love just pour out of them.  This is a reflection of His Christmas gift, a baby sent to love the world, die for it, and then save it.  So simple and cute, yet used in such a gigantic way. Taking the time to focus on this part of Christmas is very hard. However, when you get the chance to, it makes that batch of cookies seem so unimportant compared to reading the Christmas story one more time with your kid (even though they know it by heart).  Happy Advent!