Elfettes and Boggle

We are wrapping up our last week of "school" before the much anticipated Christmas break.
Today was one of those perfect school days--the kind I like to post. Why was it good? Maybe it was because we had a fellow school friend over for the day while her parents were away. This made school seem extra special AND there was no complaining! Strength in numbers!

We covered phonics, spelling, and handwriting with several rounds of Boggle--2nd grade style. That means 2 letter words were acceptable and proper names like Zed.

For math we had an introduction to multiplication. This is totally silly but it worked. We pretended I was Mrs. Claus and the girls were my "elf-ettes." Everyone knows that regular elves build toys but what do elf-ettes do? They help Mrs. Claus bake cookies. Afterall that is the diet secret that has kept Santa going strong for years.
Using blocks for cookies, and uno cards for cookie sheets Mrs. Claus gave instructions by writing on the dry-erase board.
3x3=
that meant make 3 groups of 3 or put 3 cookies on 3 different cookie sheets.
how many altogether? 9
so, 3x3=9
then it was 6x4= and so on, etc, etc.
The more ridiculous the scenario the more likely the more likely they'll remember the lesson...at least that's the hope I'm clinging to.

In between lessons they had breaks, cleaned rooms, did jobs, music practicing etc.

We had lunch in Spanish, reviewing food and colors.

In the afternoon we had quiet reading time--my favorite!!

In and around all that I somehow got the kitchen cleaned, living room vacuumed, floor swept, 2 loads of laundry, 3 French lessons, and this blog post! I guess this is one of those rare "Superwoman" days and the kind I definitely like to post to buoy me up on those "Slackerwoman" days.