Week One of Christmas School

Cricket and I do a modified version of our normal school week during December. We still do a lot of reading and other "normal" activities everything is just Christmas themed. The only thing we have continued from our traditional school week so far is her Horizon math work.

A large part of our very enjoyable school time has been spent doing the Truth in Tinsel advent activities.

Luckily we started on Monday to get ahead a little, since I already got sick and we missed two days at the end of the week. You know what they say about the best laid plans! Cricket has loved these lessons though and making the ornaments has really brought everything home.

On Day 1 - We made a Candle for Jesus "The Light of the World". Cricket was telling her Daddy about this lesson and the names of Jesus that night, and said "but Daddy his real name is Jesus". Cuteness.

On Day 2 - Cricket chose to mix red and blue to make purplish paint for our crown, and she added glitter instead of sequins or gems. She still wasn't so sure about the other names of Jesus.

On Day 3 - We made Zechariah, and I think this was Cricket's favorite thus far. While this isn't a "cute ornament" I would want to keep, it REALLY sunk in the story. She loved popping the bubble on Zechariah's mouth!

On Day 4 - We focused on the angel Gabriel and also what angels of the bible did. This was probably our best discussion yet. We also verged into talking about loved ones that we have lost and Cricket is still very focused on our dog that we had to put to sleep. She wanted to make our ornament look like M (our dog) and not like Gabriel. I couldn't figure out how to make a black lab angel ornament so we compromised. We made the Gabriel ornament together and then she drew a picture of angel M. (It's hard to see M's pink wings, but they are there)

Once again, I highly recommend that you pick up a copy if you haven't already. You can see how much everyone is loving it here on the Facebook page. I've really enjoyed seeing what everyone has done.

In addition to Truth in Tinsel we have been marking items off of our Christmas To Do List.

We started with decorating and these are a few pictures of Cricket's room. Her Nativity has been one of my favorite purchases for her, just this year she has already played with it for several hours (in context).

She really loved making the Borax Snowflake Crystals. We must have checked in on them over a dozen times in the day that it was forming. I think I let her make this a little too big, it was hard to get out of the jar, but we will definitely be doing this simple activity again.

Before

After a few hours

Final Project

Cricket and I also worked together on the Felt Tree for her school room. She had very specific instructions on the ornaments and wanted to embellish them herself.

We also marked buy presents, make a present for someone, and have a movie night off of our list.

Oh, and for a little bit a realism this is how our school room looked on Monday and why we did our day 1 project at her lap desk. 

Blessings,

Check out what others are doing at this amazing site: