Cookies, Candy and Carols

While listening to our Christmas CDs today, I worked in the kitchen getting our "goodies" ready for Christmas gatherings.  Although I don't enjoy cooking that much, I do enjoy making sweets!  or maybe it's the eating that I enjoy  

The snowman dessert tray was a birthday present.  I collect snowman and saw this in Tennessee while on vacation and asked for it for Christmas.  My mother-in-law got it for my birthday so I could use it this Christmas.

My mom's caramel corn on the right.  Very good!

On the top left - crunchy peanut butter balls, pretzel candies, peppermint bark and chocolate covered pretzels (some with peppermint).

On the left, Oreo cookie bark (some dark and some white chocolate) and more dipped pretzels.

I have a book called Mary Did You Know? written by Mark Lowry based on the song.  I read a little bit to the youth group at church last night and it has gotten me thinking more about how Mary felt and what she actually knew even up until the night He was born.  I'm going to quote a page in the book:

"Did she know about the beatings?  Did she know about Gethsemane?  Did she know about the cross?  Did she know about the resurrection?  I don't think so.  Aren't you glad God gives us just enough light to take the next step?  He doesn't tell us everything that lies ahead.  He gives us just enough information to spark our interest, to encourage us to follow.  And the life-changing events He keeps to Himself...until we're ready for them."

Another pondering question:  When did Jesus know who he was?  To quote a song by Relient K on "Let it Snow baby, Let it Reindeer":

"the first time that you opened your eyes
did you realize that you would be my saviour?
and the first breath that left your lips
did you know that it would change this world forever?"

"i celebrate the day
that you were born to die
so i might one day
pray for you to save my life."

Merry Christmas!

Finishing off our Christmas studies

Today is the last day of school for us for 3 weeks.  I'm not sure who's more excited, me or them.  

On Tuesday, we studied the different colors of Christmas and the meanings behind each color.

Green - We see in Christmas trees and wreaths and it symbolizes life.

White - We see in snow (although not everyone sees snow), Santa's beard and angels.  White symbolizes purity and perfectness.  Also, light from candles symbolizes the light we must spread into the world by telling others about Jesus.

Red - We see in Santa's suit, holly berries, and poinsettias.  Red symbolizes the blood that Jesus shed on the cross.  Without His birth, we would not have the cross.

Gold - We see in stars, bells, lots of decorations.  Gold is the most precious metal, just as Jesus is the most precious gift.  Gold reminds us of the gifts that Jesus received from the magi and the star that led them to Bethlehem.

The boys each sewed their own star and we framed them.  They both did very well at sewing and had fun doing it.

Then Thursday, we talked more about the nativity story and read a couple of books about the first Christmas.  I found a picture online with Mary and Jesus and it looked very "stained glass".  I had the boys color them with crayon (I also couldn't resist and colored my own.)  Then we wiped the pictures with vegetable oil and let them dry.  I purchased red mattes that we taped the pictures into and attached a hanger.  We have hung them on the windows for the stained glass look.  The pictures I took look like the mattes are black because of the light from the windows.

Alex's

Nicolas's

Today we are talking about the real St. Nicholas and the different Santa's of the world.  Then our official Christmas break begins.  I plan to start my Christmas baking this afternoon and then tomorrow afternoon when the boys are at the Christmas party for church.

Conner Prairie

We visited Conner Prairie in Fishers today.  The boys each did their own program.  Alex learned how they celebrated Christmas in 1836 and Nicolas learned how they make gingerbread and went on the hunt for the runaway Gingerbread Boy.  Afterwards, we visited the Gingerbread Village.  I have posted some of my favorite houses.  We don't have time this year, but next year we are going to try our hand at making a gingerbread house (although not NEAR as elaborate as the ones in these pictures!)

This is all different angles of one house.  The chimney is pez candies, inside the staircase is made of sugar wafers, and the columns are lifesavers.  Very impressive!

The castle "bricks" are slices of gum.

Merry Christmas

Enjoy this link I found on another blog.  It's very funny and easy to do!

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1307978161

 

For all you English Teachers out there

I just wanted to show off what Alex has been doing in English.  I have also learned much about labeling sentence structures.  We use Shurley English 3, and because of frustration levels for both Alex and me, we have slowed down much more than they recommend for this level.  We will be using this book again next year for English and then I will probably look at something else.  For a child not interested in writing, this is not the best choice.

 

SN - Subject Noun

V - Verb

Adv- adverb

Adj - adjective

A - article

P - preposition

OP - object of the preposition

PNA - possessive noun adjective

PPA - possessive pronoun adjective

Christmas Around the World completed

Today we studied our last 2 countries and how they celebrate Christmas - Spain and Mexico.  Like other countries, the children in both of these countries receive their gifts on Jan. 6 - Three Kings Day.  They also leave shoes out on Christmas Eve rather than hanging stockings.  In Mexico, they play Travelers and Innkeepers.  The travelers mimick the trip that Joseph and Mary took to Bethlehem, stopping at specified places along the way and being refused a room by the innkeepers.  At the final stop, they all enjoy a meal together.  Spain rings their bells for their midnight mass services, after which they have a large feast after fasting all Christmas Eve Day.  Therefore, we strung 2 bells together to hang on our tree for Spain. 

Since the poinsettia orginally came from Mexico, we cut a paper poinsettia to place on our tree.  It's similar to a snowflake, but in red paper.  http://www.creativekidsathome.com/activities/activity_75.shtml  We also read The Legend of the Poinsettia by Tomie de Paola.

 

SUMMARY:

China - paper chain

Japan - paper fans

Russia - paper dolls

Germany - candles

France - stars

Italy - nativity scence

Gr. Britain - crackers

Canada - masks

Spain - bells

Mexico - paper poinsettias

If we do this again, we will have to get a larger tree!!  We had a lot of fun with this study.  Now the boys are anxious to be able to pop their crackers open.  To finish off this week, we are studying the colors of Christmas, focusing on the nativity, and looking at the different Santas of the world and who the real St. Nicholas was.  I will post pictures the rest of this week, then we are on VACATION!

Part 4 - Great Britain & Canada

We started today talking about Great Britain, the country that orginated Christmas caroling (Wassailing).  Part of their celebration is placing a cracker at each table setting for the Christmas dinner.  A cracker is a round tube filled with candy and treats, wrapped in paper and tied at each end.  The name comes from the sound it makes when the ends are pulled out ("Crack"), and the treats come out.  We placed these under the tree as a gift instead of in our tiny tree.

Canada's celebrations are very similar to ours.  However, Nova Scotia has a tradition that sounds very similar to trick-or-treating in the US.  Groups go door to door wearing masks and ringing bells to ask for candy and treats.  The host of the home then will try to guess who the people are.  If they are correct, the guest will remove their mask.  I let the kids go free when I gave them a small piece of cardstock and told them to make a mask.  They didn't end up with what I had in mind, but here is a picture of their masks.

Nicolas's is very hard to see, but he said it was just an eyemask (or eyepatch) and Alex's is half a face, he named Evelyn.

Happy Christmas to all!  (Great Britain's greeting)

Part 3 - Germany & France

In our study of France, we found out that they decorate their trees with lots of stars.  In our Germany study we learned that Martin Luther was the first person to bring an evergreen tree inside and decorated it with lit candles.  They would only light them on Christmas Eve.  Something about both countries, we learned that today (Dec. 6) is St. Nicholas Day (which Nicolas thought was very cool!)  In both countries the children receive gifts from their Santa on Dec. 5 in their shoes.  Then on Christmas they celebrate the religious part of Christmas with mass and feasting.  Then on New Year's Day they receive gifts from friends and famly members. 

The ornaments the boys made today were candles made from foam paper rolled up and ribbon glued to the outside and a 3-D star I found on enchantedlearning.com sprinkled with glitter to make it shine.

You can see Nicolas's candle on the left and Alex's at the lower right.

More Christmas Around the World

Today we studied Russia and Italy and how they celebrate Christmas.  Russia is famous for dolls, so we made paper dolls to place on our tree.  Italy is where the first nativity scene was created by St. Francis of Assisi.  We made a nativity scene with foam paper and popsicle sticks.  A couple interesting things about both countries, is that their gift giving day is on Epiphany, Jan. 6.  Some children get gifts on both Christmas and Epiphany.  Also both countries believe not only in Santa but an old woman who was asked to help the 3 Wise Men find baby Jesus, but she refused.  Now she is cursed to roam around giving gifts to good girls and boys.  In Russia, they call her Babouschka and in Italy she is La Befana who wears black and rides around on a broomstick (sounds like another holiday Americans celebrate to me.)  Here a 2 pictures of the boys placing their ornaments on (or near) the tree.  We are finding our tree is too small (or our ornaments are too big.)

Christmas Around the World

Instead of studying a book the next 2 weeks, we are going to concentrate on Christmas.  I have checked out some books from the library on how other countries celebrate Christmas along with some internet research and some ideas from our geography book "Galloping the Globe".  Instead of waiting until the end of the 2 weeks, I will try to post periodically with pictures of what we are doing.  Today we talked about Japan and China.  Because there are few Christians in these 2 countries, they don't celebrate "Christmas", but have adopted many of our customs.  China does not have Christmas trees, but a Tree of Lights.  Just as Christmas is the largest celebration in the states, the Chinese New Year is the largest celebration there.  Japan celebrates a Spring Festival by giving and receiving gifts and the children watch out for their Santa Claus who has eyes in the back of his head. 

We bought a small tabletop tree (for $1 at Wal-mart) for our school room.  With every country we study, we are making an ornament for our tree.  Today we made a paper chain to represent China and paper fans to represent Japan.  Here are the pictures I took of the boys putting their ornaments on the tree.

Volcanoes

Last week we read the story "Hill of Fire" which is based on a real life event in Mexico when a volcano is Paricutin was born.  The boys thought it would be very interesting to see a volcano "born".  We checked out other books from the library about other volcanoes around the world.  Here are pictures of the lapbook we did.

The cover of Nicolas's lapbook.

Inside Nicolas's lapbook.  Both boys did pretty much the same components, with the exception of the one you see here labeled "Ways I Can Help" inside the next flap says "my Dad".  Then Nicolas listed some things he can do like: help fix things, keep his toys picked up...

The inside of Alex's lapbook.  He did the Volcano question and answer page you see in the middle.  The other components you see in Alex's, Nicolas also did.

First, we talked a little about Mexico. 

This has a pull tab to make the volcano explode.  It came from Scholastic.

The inside flap flipped up to reveal more minit books and clip art of volcanoes.

Lastly, we did a volcano experiment.

I will probably have to keep the baking soda and vinegar hidden for awhile.  They thought it was cool to watch the bubbles overflow.  We were out of red food coloring, so we had blue lava :)

Last night, Alex watched "HIll of Fire" reading rainbow video from the library.  After the story, they talked more about volcanoes and showed some eruptions.

Pilgrim study

For the last 2 weeks, we have been doing a study on Pilgrims.  We made lapbooks using the Pilgrim project pack from Homeschool E-store.  We all learned a lot.  There were many things we studied that I did not know - including the story of Squanto.  I am including pictures from both boys' lapbooks.  Nicolas's is red and Alex's is blue.

Here are their covers.

This is Alex's left flap.  We learned some vocabulary words as we went through the study.  The top matchbook is "Shhh!  Secret Meeting" explaining why the Pilgrims had to meet in secret - if King James knew they were worshipping in a different way than he required, they would be persecuted (vocabulary word.)

This is Nicolas's book opened up. 

Starting at the far left, the top Pilgrim book explains why they were called Pilgrims - that they traveled far from home for religious reasons.  The top yellow book called "The Scrooby Separatists" talks about the people from Scrooby, England who separated from the Church of England and went to Holland to get away from King James.  While they were there, they noticed their children losing the English ways and fogetting the English values.  That's when they decide to travel to America to bring their children up with English values and still have freedom to worship the way they please. 

The green book is a biography of William Bradford, the 2nd governor of Plymouth Colony.  The black and white picture on the left is a picture of Bradford. 

The orange pilgrim picture opens up to tell about what kinds of clothes the pilgrims wore.  The rest of the pictures just fill in.

This is the right side of Nicolas's lapbook.  There is a picture of the Mayflower with a map below it showing the Mayflower's route.  This flap lifts up to reveal:

...the first 13 colonies of the US.  Under this flap we have...

a blue envelope book talking about their journey - there was not enough food, many were sick, it was very crowded and there were lots of storms.  The Mayflower Compact book states that the compact was an agreement between the Pilgrims and England that England would send supplies and Plymouth Colony would return the favor.  They would still follow English rules, but they would be their own separate colony.  The green book asks When they sailed? - 1620, How many passengers? 102, and The name of the ship? - the Mayflower.   The rest are just fill-in pictures.

On the far right of Alex's (blue) book, we began our talk about the Indians who helped the pilgrims, Samoset matchbook and Squanto.  We read a wonderful story about Squanto called "Squanto and the Miracle of Thanksgiving" by Eric Metaxas.  It really brings to a point that God had a specific plan for Squanto to be kidnapped so that he could learn the language and be saved from the disease that killed his entire village so that he could help the Pilgrims later.  It compared him to the Joseph story of Genesis, that what men intended for evil, God intended for good.  I highly recommend the book!

Below the Indian books we created a turkey pop-up book.

Behind this flap...

we have a book called "Giving Thanks" that tells some of the things the Pilgrims were thankful for.  Then we did the fan book stating what we are thankful for - family, food, Jesus, parents, etc.

Then to finish up, the boys copied a prayer and glued it to the back of the book.  "Without Thy sunshine and Thy rain We could not have the golden grain; Without Thy love we'd not be fed; We thank Thee for our daily bread."  Nicolas only copied the last 2 lines because it takes him so long to write.  Alex wrote his in cursive, even though he "hates cursive".  He writes so neatly when he takes his time!

We really had a lot of fun with this study.  As an extra, we have been reading "The Mayflower Secret" by Dave and Neta Jackson (the Trailblazer Series).  It is too much for Nicolas to sit and listen too.  It's a late elementary reader, and with the King James language in it, it's hard to understand.  We still have 3 chapters left that I am hoping to finish up tomorrow.  It's a good book, and Alex enjoys listening to it.  We plan to use several other Trailblazer books, especially about missionaries the next school year.

Tennessee Vacation

For our fall break this year, we went to Sevierville, TN with my in-laws to a cabin they own there.  I have always loved Tennessee, but have never been there in the fall.  It is so beautiful when the trees start changing colors!  Even though this was our fall break, we did a couple things that I will count as a school day.  We had just finished talking about horses, so the first thing we did was go to Five Oaks Riding Stables and we all rode horses for 1 hour.  We had to force Nicolas on, but he now says that was his favorite part of vacation.  This is the first time I had ever been on a horse also. 

Alex on his horse,

Nicolas on his horse, Coal.

After horse back riding, we went to Nascar Speedpark.  We went there the last time we were in Tennessee, but it was the spring, and it was busy.  This time there was hardly anyone else there, so the people running the tracks let the kids stay on as long as they wanted to.  The kids wanted to go trick-or-treating while we were there, so we found out Five Oaks Tanger Outlet had trick-or-treating in the stores.  The boys dressed up in their Jedi robes once again and got lots of candy.  That gave me a chance to scope out the stores I would like to shop at in the future!  Ryan and I went to a Mystery Dinner Theatre that night, while the kids stayed with Grandpa and Grandma.  The food was good and the show was funny, (Frankly Scarlet, You're Dead).

Grandpa and Grandma wanted to take all of us to Wonderworks.  It is like a science museum, but the building was built upside down.  They had a hurricane and earthquake simulator, a bed of nails, several optical illusions, a space center, to name a few.  Alex built his own rollercoaster on a computer, then got in a "pod" and was able to ride the rollercoaster he built. 

The last day we were there, we took a trip into the Smokey Mountain National Park.  Along the road we were on, there were 3 old log cabins along with the barns, mills and other buildings that went along with the farm.  The first homestead had a brochure telling about the history of the farmer who lived there.  It was neat to go inside the cabins and bars.  We hiked on the trails a couple of different times and of course got some great pictures of the view.

This is the sunrise from our bedroom window. Gorgeous!!

The rest of our vacation was spent shopping, playing in the game room at the cabin (pool and arcade), and sitting in the hot tub.  No one was ready to leave!

Africa lapbook

We finished our African Animals lapbook today.  Here are pictures of Alex's finished project.

 

 Also wanted to share, yesterday Nicolas decided to make his own flag (a product of reading The Finest Horse in Town and studying how to draw a moving flag.)  He decided rather than draw one, he wanted to make one.  Now, this is normal for both boys to be drawing flags and leaving them all over my house :)  But this time, he didn't want paper.  He wanted a piece of fabric.  I just happened to have some extra white in the closet.  After coloring on the colors, he went outside to find a stick (not difficult with the winds we have had).  Then he went to the garage to get a shovel to dig himself a hole to put his stick into.  It is now flying out front beside the front steps.  He's very proud of it.