Christmas at Disney World

There is so much fun Christmas stuff to see at Disney World. We had been once in December before and I'm so glad we got to go again at this time of year. The weather was colder than I would have liked, but seeing all the decorations made up for it.


Love the castle with the lights

We missed the holiday storytellers in Epcot last time so we made sure to get to some of them. The girls liked most of them and Colin wanted to see them all.

Molly with Canada storyteller

La Befana in Italy

Japan storyteller with a Daruma, which the kids remembered from when we studied Japan

Monkey King in China

Colin with Father Christmas in UK

Storyteller in Germany tells about the Advent calendar, first Christmas tree, and nutcrackers.

Then a giant nutcracker came out to take pics with the kids.

Storyteller in Norway, who has a hard time telling her story because of the mischievious gnome.
This was very funny and everyone's favorite.

It's fun to see the characters dressed up.

Santa Goofy

There are lots of decorations in the parks and the resorts.

Real gingerbread house

It's amazing to see all these lights in one place.

In this one, you can see the pretend snow falling.

Mickey's Jingle Jungle Parade

Animal Kingdom tree

Magic Kingdom tree

There are also some normal sized trees around. In Animal Kingdom, they have trees decorated for different characters. We saw Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Donald, Goofy, and Nemo themes.

Colin with the Donald Duck tree

Main Street, Magic Kingdom

Other pictures from our trip are in a slideshow in the post before this one.

Walt Disney World Trip

Pictures from our most recent trip to Disney World
December 5-13, 2010

Viking Field Trip

I'm so glad we were able to fit studying Vikings in before leaving on our trip. The kids got so much more out of the Norway part of Epcot than they have before. They have a Stave Church with some Viking exhibits inside. The kids, especially Caleigh, noticed a lot of the things in the exhibits and on the buildings that we had read about. We also went on the Viking ship ride, Maelstrom.

In front of Stave Church

Stave Church

Erik the Red

Caleigh noticed the braided beard just like we had read about

In front of a troll inside store

Dragon head of ship ride

Our Week with Vikings and a Surprise

It was hard for me to get back into school after having a week off, especially knowing that we'll be off for another week next week. The kids did pretty well with it though.

We spent this week learning about Vikings. We read from Story of the World: Volume 2 about Vikings coming from Scandinavia to invade France, Eric the Red and his son, Leif, and the Norse gods.
Some other books we read were Hiccup: The Seasick Viking, What a Viking!, Viking World, Leif's Saga, Viking Ships at Sunrise, Adventures with the Vikings, and Yo, Vikings. Of the Scandinavian countries, we mostly concentrated on Norway because we'll be getting the chance to explore it more next week.

The kids made their own little Vikings.

We also made Viking longships. We combined the instructions in SOTW activity guide with these, an idea I got here.

Molly coloring the pictures for the ship

Caleigh gluing on strips of paper

Notebook pages (mini-books from Homeschool Share)



Questions and a map of to label, flag of Norway, adjectives describing Vikings, a Viking longship to label.
I left the blank space to add a picture of the boats the kids made.

Colin and his FIRST Lego League team spent some time getting ready for their regional tournament tomorrow. They met to practice their skit, possible questions the judges will ask, and robot runs.

We also gave the kids an early Christmas surprise.

Chad made this pizza while I was running around trying to get all the stuff together.

The brownies wouldn't cut without falling apart so this is what he made.

The present



Opening the present




Disney shirts, toys, glow sticks, trading pins, etc.




And in the bottom Disney World tickets





Colin immediately ran to his room, where he pulled maps from our last trip out of his drawer so he could start planning.


Now I have to get back to packing because we're leaving tomorrow right after Colin's FIRST Lego League tournament.

See what other homeschoolers did this week at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.