Be Sociable!

With the exam out of the way, Tiger and I started to look for recipes to make foodie gifts for people.  We haven't set out to do it this way, but this year our Christmas theme seems to be "simple", especially if we were to compare it with our efforts last year.

This year we made Coconut and White Chocolate Snowballs.

It is so easy to make that we made two batches of them to give to everyone.

Next, Tiger made cards to accompany the foodie gifts.  Again, this year's cards are very straightforward to make.

The material list:

• foam Christmas tree template
• green and red ink pads
• alphabet stamps
• strong craft cards
• Christmas-theme craft papers
• sequins
• glue and scissors

To make the card:

1. Choose a Christmas-theme craft paper and trace the tree template.
2. Cut of the tree shape.
3. Paste it on the front of the card.  Decorate the card with sequins.
4. Stamp the words "Merry Christmas" inside the card using the alphabet stamps.  Tiger alternated the red and green inks for his words.

Once we've made our gifts, it was time to socialise with friends again.

I spent a day at a drawing workshop with my artist friends.  Tiger tagged along and did a few drawings as well, but mostly he was enjoying himself by being a social butterfly during break times.

Tiger knew about half the people there, but by the end of the class he has made friends with everyone in the workshop, engaging each person or a small group in turn with various topics.  I sat in a corner of the studio and talked with my own friends but all the while keeping half an eye on Tiger as he exercised his socialising prowess around the room.  Some of the topics that I managed to overhear him talk to the adults about were:

• the two world wars
• making paper aeroplanes
• military blunders
• drawing, art, collage, Matisse
• homeschooling, what he is learning at home

At the end of the workshop, a few people whom we met for the first time there came up to me to tell me how delighted they were to meet Tiger and how impressed they have been by his overall demeanour.  I thanked them for their kind words, and was pleased that Tiger has contributed to some positive P.R. towards the overall impression people have of home-educated children.  A few people there had never met a homeschooled child before.  Now that they have met and talked with one in real life, I hope they will be able to rely on this experience and apply their critical thinking ability (assuming it is still intact) to avoid being duped into believing the ridiculous myths about homeschooling children.

There is certainly no shortage of opportunities to socialise this week!

We topped our reading of A Christmas Carol by spending a day at a homeschool creative writing/book club.  The book club is led by a homeschooling mum-of-six who used to be an English teacher.  The format of the club is such that the children spend the morning discussing the book as a group, noting several points of interests, such as the author's writing style, or use of descriptive techniques.  This is followed by a short creative writing exercise where the children will work in groups of two to five to get their drafts in before lunch.

Lunch there is a highly sociable, community event.  Each mum brings a dish to share at lunch so food is always plentiful and delicious.  This week being our last meeting before Christmas, lunch is especially scrumptious and in abundance, which is a truly wonderful way to enjoy the festivity.  The children usually wolf down their lunch and run outside to play for an hour or so while the adults stay indoors to tidy up and chat.

In the afternoon, the children present their work to the group.  Previous presentations include an adaptation of a novel into a play, a short paragraph written in the style of an author, and descriptive writing.  On this occasion, the children were tasked with writing their own Christmas carol based on the structure and storyline of Dicken's story.  I have been constantly impressed by the children's creativity and by the quality of their work, individual ones as well as group projects.  Above all, I am grateful for the opportunity to be in the company of these parents who are contributing so much to creating the most suitable educational environment for their children.



This post is linked up to:

1. Entertaining and Educational - Christmas
2. Collage Friday - Remembering Ecuador
3. Weekly Wrap Up: The One that will be Hard to Top for a While
4. The Homeschool Mother's Journal {December 21, 2013}
5. Hip Homeschool Hop - 12/24/2013