Gingerbread Theme

Books



Gingerbread Houses



Caleigh & Molly's                                        Colin's



Making gingerbread cookies

Finished cookies

Christmas: Candy Cane Theme

The kids had fun twisting the dough to make these candy cane cookies. I'd link to the recipe, but the kids and my hubby all agreed they tasted awful.

Candy cane ornaments:

 

 

 

Christmas Trees and Elves

Books we read:

From the same book that has A Story of Three Trees, we also read The Elves and the Shoemaker.



Christmas tree waffles

Christmas tree brownies

We had this new elf book show up at our house. It's about an elf who pops in to children's houses. He hides in all different places and reports back to Santa on whether the kids have been good or not.

 

The next morning, the kids found an elf just like the one in the book waiting when they came downstairs. The little elf moves around a lot when no one is looking and the kids have been having a great time searching all over for him.

This is where they found the elf on the second morning he was here.

Another morning they found him making snow angels in some flour.

The Polar Express

We had a fun evening with The Polar Express. Everyone got into their pajamas and we read the book. Then we watched the movie and had hot chocolate with marshmallows, popcorn, and cupcakes.






North Pole cupcakes

Snowmen marshmallows

Faces drawn with edible markers

Kids in pajamas ready to watch the movie:





Christmas: Reindeer Theme Day

We only had a couple books with reindeer so we went ahead and read Christmas books about all different animals on this day.




Reindeer cupcakes:
These are made with Nilla wafers, pretzels, and sixlets or M&Ms.





 

Footprint reindeer:

Our Week: Slowing Down and Christmas Activities

I'm feeling burnt out and in need of a break so I decided to make this week more of a review and do Christmas activities.

Christmas Activities



I wanted to make sure we get in some Christmas stuff. After holidays pass, I usually feel bad because we didn't get to read all our books or do projects I wanted. I decided to make sure we have time this year. I divided our Christmas books into themes where possible and we've been taking a day for each theme. We started last week with The Nutcracker.

Monday was all about nativities. We read a lot of good books. The girls made nativities from popsicle sticks. You can see what we did here.

Tuesday was reindeer day. We only had a couple books about reindeer so I added books about all animals to this day. The kids made footprint reindeer and reindeer cupcakes.

Wednesday was The Legend of the Candy Cane. We made candy cane cookies.

Thursday, we had to be out of the house some so we just read books that didn't go with any of the themes.

Friday our theme was Christmas trees and elves. Besides reading books, we made Christmas tree brownies.

We'll continue these theme days next week with gingerbread, The Polar Express, and maybe snowmen.

I'll be posting pictures and more about what we did Tuesday through Friday soon.

Three Rs



Most of our math this week has been reviewing. Molly worked with money and adding numbers on side 2 of the abacus. Caleigh has been doing multiplication practice sheets. Colin is working on adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing fractions in Basic College Math.

I've been reviewing phonograms with Caleigh. She's also done some cursive copywork. Molly has continued with her phonics lessons and handwriting.

History/Science

We're on a break from our history until after New Year's Day.

Colin had his final class for Biology 101 this week. They had a final so he spent some time reading over the material again and studying. He'll begin Biology 102 in January. During his class, the girls decided to spend more time with the horses they have there.

Christmas: Nativity Theme

Books we read:



 Moritmer's Christmas Manger, Santa's Favorite Story, The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey, and The Best Christmas Pageant Ever are some of our very favorite Christmas books.



The girls made these nativities from popsicle sticks. Instructions can be found here.




Left: Molly's                                      Right: Caleigh's




They also did this easy craft. They gave the pieces for this out at the nativity festival we visited.
It's just an envelope with a section cut out, a star sticker, a wooden clothespin, a piece of cloth, and some straw or yarn.

The nativity festival was great. There were hundreds of different nativities from all over the world.

 

The kids also got to dress up and pose for pictures.

 

 

The Nutcracker

This year I decided to try to do a theme day for Christmas books. Some may end up taking more than one day and others may be combined.
Last week we did The Nutcracker. We read a few different versions of the story. We also watched a Care Bear movie about it. We listened to the CD, Tchaikovsky Discovers America, which includes some of the music.

 

I found these cute Nutcracker cupcakes in Hello, Cupcake. The recipe called for a lot of different candies and things we didn't have. Instead of buying the stuff, I just pulled out our leftover Halloween candy and let the kids be creative. Each nutcracker took 6 cupcakes.

Colin's

Molly's

Caleigh's

Showing off their creations:

 

 

 

I had to do one too. I didn't notice until I was looking at the picture that I forgot shoes.

Lastly, we went to a school showing of The Nutcracker. It was really good and we all enjoyed it.

 

Our Week: The Nutcracker, Connecticut, and Velveteen Rabbit

 History/Geography

In Story of the World, we read about Japan isolating itself from the rest of the world. We also learned about the Ming Dynasty losing control of China and that the Manchu began to rule.

In A History of US, we read about Roger Williams.

Our state this week was Connecticut. We read several books, did a coloring page, and filled in the notebook page.

Christmas Activities

We spent some time learning about The Nutcracker. We read a few different versions of the book, watched CareBears: The Nutcracker, and listened to Tchaikovsky Discovers America. The kids had a lot of fun making nutcracker cupcakes (pictures coming soon). We used up leftover Halloween candy and they were all very creative. We also got to go see a performance of the Nutcracker ballet. Last year, we saw one that only had some of the acts. The kids didn't seem to enjoy it much, but they really liked it this time. I think seeing it from the beginning helped and reading about it so they would understand what was going on made it much better. 

We went to the Children's Theatre to see "The Velveteen Rabbit." It was really cute and I think the kids all enjoyed it.

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After the play today, we drove to Charleston, SC. Colin has hockey games here Saturday and Sunday. We were able to go to the beach for a little while.



Beach at sunset



Then we went to a park that has drive through and walk through light displays.

 

Our Week: Hockey, Germany, and Nativities

We've been so busy that I've gotten a little behind in doing our weekly wrap-ups. We had Molly's birthday party 2 weeks ago. My dad and sister came to visit that day and stayed for the week of Thanksgiving. We took that week off from school. We left on the Friday after Thanksgiving to go to Colin's hockey tournament in Atlanta for the weekend. After a week off school and traveling, it took us some time to get back into our routine this week.

In history, we read about the Thirty Year's War. We read some books about Germany, including some Grimm's fairy tales. Reading Rapunzel and Snow White made things a little more interesting for the girls.

Colin had his biology class this week. They got their midterm back and he did great. While he was in class, the girls had fun visiting the horses.

On Friday, we went to a nativity festival. It was really nice. They had nativities from all over the world. They also had crafts,  dress up clothes, and a nativity scene to take pictures of them dressed up.

We went to visit Santa.

This weekend was busy again with hockey. Colin had a game Saturday morning and one in the evening. Then he had another game Sunday morning.




Colin is in the black stopping the puck



Girls at the hockey game.

  

Love the missing front teeth smile