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.