Names of Jesus

For the month of December we take a break from our regular school stuff (except for math) and do a Christmas study. This year we're studying the Names of Jesus. And lest you think I am oh, so smart, I must tell you I got the idea from easyfunschool. They have loads of ideas for Christmas. We started with Alpha and Omega and made these banners:
















TADA......


I did print the verse from Revelation 22:13 and glued it to the middle. After that we did Wonderful Counselor (they had to solve a dilemma about Johnny who was with some friends and a conversation was taking a turn for the worse - oh my! what should Johnny do?); Everlasting Father (did a family tree for this which they had fun doing); Mighty God (made a Jesus is mightier than... picture collage with pictures of mighty things such as: a vacuum, oven, binoculars, a dog with a tree in his mouth, germs, Mighty Dog dog food to name a few. We also had grapes on toothpicks for barbels) ; Prince of Peace; Unspeakable Gift (we wrapped a box to reminds us of Jesus love for us and wrote a thank you note to God); Lamb of God (made a cotton ball lamb); and Good Shepherd. Most of them included copywork of a verse which we have put into a Christmas journal/scrapbook along with the other things we've done. Here's a picture of a few things which will go in later:

And that's it for our Christmas study for now. Oh, and we light our Advent candles and are reading Bartholomew's Passage this year as well. We are liking this one.

Festive (Easy) Ornaments

The kids and I made these ornaments with peppermint candies the other day and they were soooo easy - even the craft challenged could do this:

Ok, I don't know why my picture turned out liked that. I am so not a whiz at this stuff. But anyways, unwrap the candy, make your design-making sure they touch and bake in the oven for a few minutes. I baked mine at 300 for about 5 minutes. You'll see some of them are a little overdone. (If you do a better homes & garden search online, you can get better directions :) Although, I have to admit I did accidentally break the tree at the bottom. I had glued thread for hanging and thought the glue was dry BUT it wasn't and it broke. After looking at the directions, you are supposed to insert a hanger AFTER they come out of the oven and the candy is soft. Same with the decorations which we put on before. I guess it would pay to read the instructions carefully before you start :) And then a piece of candy broke off the cross. And you know what? Craft glue doesn't work for gluing pieces of candy together! Who knew? So that's it - my festive candy ornaments.

Busy, Busy, Busy....

It's that time of year and we've been busy! The day after Thanksgiving we went and cut our own tree - a 9 footer!! It really didn't look THAT big outside. Good thing we have a cathedral ceiling in the family room. Z couldn't wait to put the lights on and decorate it. Most of it is done - it just needs a few last touches. And I really tried not to rearrange the clustered ornaments... We did some shopping today since there's supposed to be a lot of snow tomorrow. So I'm thinking it'll be a good day to work on some gifts or maybe make some fudge. Tonight we made our annual Christmas countdown straw for Jesus' crib:




Twenty-five strips are cut and each day a piece of "straw" is torn off and put into Jesus' crib:



We're doing a Christmas study of the Names of Jesus that we've been working on all week. But I'll save that for another post. Now if we could only unpack all the boxes with the decorations.... For now though I'm going to of have a cup of tea and watch Rudolph.

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Munchie - A New Creation

When we had gone our nature hunt, we looked and looked and looked for monarch caterpillars. They were very hard to find (after searching I don't know how many milkweeds, J gave up - he was tired of looking!) But Z and I didn't and we finally found one - HOORAY! So Munchie came home with us:


We set him up in his new home and fed him some milk weed (which he obviously enjoyed from the mess he left behind:). We continued to feed him for a few days and he then went into his "J" position:

And the next day he became this:


I was really annoyed that we missed this part so we brought him inside after that. I certainly did NOT want to miss him coming out of this!!! Now he was in his chrysallis when we were getting ready to go on vacation and we didn't want to miss him coming out. Sooo....we did what any normal homeschooling family would do....


Yep, we took him along! He was a good traveler - didn't complain, didn't ask how long it would take, didn't ask for a potty break and he didn't mind my loud music either. What more could you ask for in a travel companion?

About five days later while we went out for lunch we came back and ....

TADA....

He came out while we were gone! Sigh.... maybe next time we'll get to see it. Anyways, we didn't want to let him out because the weather was rainy and miserable. So he got to stay with us one more night before we let him go. The following day we let him out. He didn't come out right away so Z pulled the stick out that Munchie was on. I think he was getting a little nervous that something happened to Munchie and that's why he wasn't flying. After awhile he finally fluttered his wings but stayed on the stick. Perhaps he really, really liked his stick? I'm not sure. But eventually he fluttered some more and went a couple inches from the stick:

He stayed there for awhile and fluttered his wings some more for us. We were going out for lunch so we said good bye and wished him well on his journey to Mexico.

His wings were fluttering while I took this picture which is why it's a little blurry. It was really neat to see this new creation.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. 2 Corinthians 5:17

After we returned from vacation, we finished our pages for our nature journal:


Next year I'm going to start looking earlier so maybe we can have more than one. We'll see if I remember - time goes oh so fast!

Nature Study - Outdoor Challenge #1

I've been wanting to use nature study as our science and decided to give it a try this year. It sure wasn't hard to convince the boys. We went out for our nature study walk to a nearby park and found a shelter that was next to a creek. (you know how water is just fascinating for boys :) We found all sorts of things - salamander, crayfish, mushrooms, animal bones and took lots of pictures. Here are a few:

this guy kind of blends in:



We're not sure what left this print but J would like to find out.... (i think he'll be disappointed if it's "just" a dog)
my guess is raccoon for this one...


We're not sure what this is either but we want to find out - poison ivy perhaps? We didn't touch it just to be on the safe side.

Here are the treasures we brought home: The leaves and queen anne's lace are in a book so we can study them and put them in our notebook. The poofy round thing (which came from a tree) and cicada shell are going on our nature shelf.


But this was our best find and, truth be told, it was one of the reasons we went out:

And, of course, Munchie came home with us but more on him in a separate post.

It was a great day to get out and enjoy the outdoors and the boys ask everyday if we can do nature study. Now if they would only ask everyday to do their language arts.....