Training Up A Child: Days 1-5 of our Advent calendar activities

We have gotten off to a good start with our advent calendar activities...even though we had to make up some of the activities we missed this weekend (frankly - we just got too busy and forgot...) but we did and kids had fun and it is all good :-)

Day 1
Our Day 1 activity on Thursday was for each child to choose one toy they were willing to donate to a less fortunate kid. The kids did VERY well with this and each chose two toys on their own. Here is a picture of us dropping them off at the donation box.

Day 2
Day 2 was on Friday and our activity was to make paper snowflakes. It should have been simple enough to do on Friday - but that was our last day of co-op, and then we got to spend the afternoon with Daddy running errands and stuff, and we were just all tired that night. So we did our puzzle piece that night but decided to wait on making the paper snowflakes. We did them today.

What I did was fold the paper for the kids and took out our pattern blocks and told them to trace shapes around the square and then I cut them out for them. They really enjoyed this activity.

Of course Alyssa just scribbled and I just chose some to cut around - LOL!

But I think it made a pretty snowflake - and she was so proud of it!

Day 3

Day 3 was Saturday and it's activity was to color a Christmas picture. We were up at Granny and PaPa's most of the day decorating the Christmas tree up there...so once again we chose to wait on that activity and did it today as well. (bad me...I just don't have the motivation and discipline on weekends like I do during the week).

Aaron wanted me to draw a Christmas tree with a train around it on his pic - I thought I did an ok job :-)

Aaron's finished picture

Alyssa's finished picture

Seth's finished picture. He really took his time and put a lot of effort into his picture.

Day 4

Day 4 - Sunday - an EXTREMELY busy day at church for me (I was home for less than 2 hours after morning service before I had to be back up there again...and it was bedtime when we got back home again)...so it's activity of reading a Christmas story...well we just added an extra story to story time today.

Day 5

Today's activity was to make a new Christmas decoration! Well - we decided to hang our snowflakes in the school room... so pretty on the wall, don't you think?!?

And the kids wanted to hang their pictures that they were so proud of on their doors. So yay! We got our decoration in!! (is that cheating?? I hope not...I just hope I do better from here on out).

The boys' pictures on their door...

Alyssa's picture on her door

Here is our puzzle...slowly getting filled in.

And I am super excited because Granny gave us her advent nativity scene this weekend!! So we got caught up on that today and got our first 5 figures hung.

Other happenings to share!
Look! We got a new heater for our schoolroom! It is a propane heater and man, it does a good job making our schoolroom nice and toasty!! We got it just in time because it is COLD today and is suppose to be COLD all week long!