Weekly Wrap-Up {Nutcracker}

It's December! How did that happen?!

It's also Nutcracker season, so we've been very busy with rehearsals and performances. Grace's ballet studio does a Nutcracker school tour, in which they pack up the set, costumes, lights, and everything else needed for a ballet performance and perform selections from Act Two for various schools. It is such a neat experience -- with the bonus of getting to miss school three Fridays in a row. ; ) They also have two Saturdays with performances. This year, Grace is in the Waltz of the Flowers.

Since my last weekly wrap-up (I missed a couple of weeks), Ryne had his Classical Conversation finals, we hosted Thanksgiving for part of my husband's family, Anna and I attended a career night for one of her top college choices, and I tried (but didn't do a good job) to help her stay calm as she finished up an application to another top choice. We've decided The Common Application is just plain evil. It loves to eat essays and mess with formatting until you give up all patience and just hit submit. I think everyone at the Blue House will be happier when the whole college application process is done!

Although CC is done for the semester, Ryne will continue school for a couple more weeks. The break is when we try to make some progress on his non-CC subjects and when I supplement the CC material.

This semester, I was a little disappointed in his government studies. It was really more of a short survey of American history, although they did spend a fair amount of time learning about the Constitution. I love that they used original documents as their reading, but I felt there were a lot of critical gaps compared to a typical American government class. Plus, Ryne already earned his American history credit last year, so I really needed this course to be different. I had already planned to supplement a little over the break by reading Showdown at Gucci Gulch as a legislative case study, but now I've also added in a traditional high school government textbook that I bought used on Amazon for him to read over the break. I might have to have Anna read it at some point too, because I'm noticing some of the same gaps in her education. She has an amazing background in political theory, but doesn't know some of the basics of how our government works. Thankfully, Ryne doesn't seem to mind the heavy reading load; in fact, he seems to be taking after his mom in that he loves anything to do with history and political science.

Slowly, slowly I continue to plug away at getting caught up after a hectic first semester. I've never been so ready for a Christmas break! My reading list for the break is about a mile long, but I've hardly started. I also haven't started my Christmas shopping and I've barely started decorating. I still have pumpkins and mums on my front porch! Granted, the weather has felt more like pumpkins and mums than Christmas trees and snowflakes, but hopefully we can at least get the lights on the tree tomorrow.

Have a wonderful week! Happy homeschooling!

Linking up with Kris at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.