A break?

People ask me if we take a break from 'school' during the Christmas holidays. Well, I would say no. Both of the girls are preschoolers and we are homeschoolers, so the learning really never ends. We've done lots of great stuff in the last few weeks. Cooking, baking, playing, shopping, decorating... there is learning to be done with all of these things and we take the time to do that. We also focused a lot on giving as a family. Every time we would go to Walmart or the grocery store we would stop to put a little money in the red bucket. I always told the girls that we were giving a little bit of our money so that other people without enough money would have food to eat. We also spent a day shopping for the foster child we chose off the tree at church. It was fun to pick things for this little girl and I think Alex really understood that we were buying for a little girl whose parents couldn't afford to buy her pretty things for Christmas. I also made a point to not buy anything for ourselves on this trip, to reiterate that we were shopping for someone else and not ourselves.
Daddy was home for 2 1/2 weeks and we had lots of great family time together.
We are now at Ft. Sill with him for the next few days and plan to visit the wildlife refuge again while we are here. We are all looking forward to the prairie dogs again.
I'm continually impressed with the knowledge that Alex is picking up and retaining in regards to the alphabet. They got flash cards in their stockings and the other day I caught them in the living room floor. Alex had the cards all spread out and was naming them to Emma. She is really doing great. I sat down with them and asked about certain cards and although she isn't 100% yet, she is certainly getting there. We are still working on colors with Emma and she doesn't have it down yet, but I'm thinking that it will be similar to Alex's process. After working FOREVER, one day it just clicked.
Anyway... we aren't on a learning break. We are never on a learning break. We have a learning lifestyle that always has opportunity for something new and exciting!