Home School Swap

A few months back I had had a particularly challenging week of homeschooling and was at my wits end. Poor Jemma was discouraged - and I really couldn't blame her. She was missing her slew of Oregon friends and was, frankly, tired of playing/putting up with little brothers and sick of me sitting her down to do school. Enough said, it was then that I felt prompted to call my amazing big sister, Sharee and ask her if she would be interested in doing a home school swap. She is homeschooling her 2nd grade daughter, Daphne, this year and Jemma ADORES her. She agreed to it and our girls were SUPER excited about it. :)

Daphne spent December 12th-19th with our family and we LOVED having her.
I am ashamed to say that of the 6 Christmas crafts I had planned, we only got around to 3 - and I only took pictures of 2 of them. Lame. (In my defense, we did the other 3 up at the cabin later over Christmas with ALL the nieces and nephews.)
Here they are painting little Christmas house ornaments - here's the tutorial for making the houses out of cereal/jello/cracker boxes. Again, I'm a loser and forgot to take pictures of the finished houses. They were ADORABLE. Daphne is an especially good painter.

We also did borax crystal snowflakes. SO COOL! I am going to make these every year! Tutorial here. (You'll have to scroll down a ways to see it.)

We also went to see the new Muppet Movie - very cute - read LOTS of Christmas books, fed the ducks (and were almost eaten by the aggressive and ginormous geese!), played at Nona's house and played lots of games while the girls weren't playing dress-up, barbies, polly-pockets, princesses or make-believe.

Yes, there was a bit of home sickness, but I think that should be expected from someone comin' from a family as fun and fantastic and Daphne's. :)

Daphne was also a good sport and participated in our ward Nativity as a "shepherdess" ;) with Jemma, also a shepherdess, and Carter, the donkey.

We loved having you Daph!

So, like I said, this was/is a swap, so that means, Jemma is in New Mexico right now soakin' in the Gariety Family until next Monday night when she flies home SOLO to Cali. I'll be nervous about that until she walks off that plane.

My first goal for this swap was for Jemma to have an opportunity to strengthen her relationship with her cousin Daphne. We've bounced around a lot in her short life, and she's had to say goodbye to a lot of friends. Daphne, however, is family and there's always a reunion or something around the corner. :)

My second goal was for Jemma to see how other families function - my sister Sharee and her husband, Arthur are raising a stellar family, so hopefully they don't put us to shame. ;) I think one of the greatest blessings of home school is that you can teach outside the box - Jem is basically on an extended Social Studies field trip. :)

Thanks Sharee for letting us have Daphne as part of our family for a week and for taking such great care of Jemma!