I hope you have recovered after Thanksgiving and are settling back in to your routine at school! My husband, Josh, and I had a wonderful visit to Indianapolis to spend time with his family. Since they live 500 miles away, our visits only happen a couple of times a year, but we had no trouble packing in a lot! We saw our youngest nephew play basketball and then Josh's brother coached a high school game later that same night. Trips to three, yes - three, different malls and a stop to Lakeshore Learning! Our closest Lakeshore store is in Washington, DC, which is still several hours away, so I took advantage that we were nearby and got everything on my list (and a few extras!). The trip went too quickly and we look forward to going back this summer. Looking at the calendar before Thanksgiving, we realized that we have four long weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks. We are trying to plan as many fun things as we can, while still teaching everything that we need to! This week we are working on writing friendly letters. We have talked about the parts of a letter and looked at our message everyday. The children have picked up very quickly on these terms! Today we wrote a letter to our principal. I wanted them to think about 2 questions they want to ask and 2 things to tell her. My favorite question to ask was "How old are you?" This came from my birthday boy! I had to explain that it is not polite to ask an adult - especially a lady - how old she is! We all signed the letter we finished and took it up to the office. Unfortunately, the principal was in a meeting and we couldn't give it to her in person. She found me after school and is writing a letter back to them! The kiddos will see it in the morning! here's our letter to Mrs. Moore Here's my mini-packet for letters. Enjoy! Click HERE to download. Happy writing to Santa!