Advent Calendar Days 13-19 & December School Wrap Up

Ok - I have gotten a little behind - sorry - things have been hectic.  I thought though that I would update you on our advent calendar and do a final December School wrap up all in the same post...if that's ok with yall :-)

Advent Calendar Days 13-19
I think the theme of our Advent activities has been "flexability".  I have made so many changes LOL but I guess the important thing is that we have kept up with it and kids are really enjoying it.

Look - that puzzle is almost completed!!

We are only missing 5 pieces from the nativity!!

Christmas is almost here!!

So last week was a bit of a rough week  :-(.  Alyssa had a fever Monday and Tuesday so that threw plans off a bit.  She got better on Wednesday and Thursday, but then woke up Thursday night with croup!!

And if that wasn't bad enough...we haven't seen Rocky, our dog, since we got home from Huntsville last Sunday :-(... We held up hope as long as we could...but it's been over a week now...I don't see any hope of him coming home now...

so with all that going on - doing Advent activities was a little on the difficult side...and weren't quite what I had originally planned...but I think we still pulled it off ok.

Day 13

Tuesday Alyssa was still not feeling well and we were a bit bummed over Rocky not being home...but Daddy came in to the rescue on Tuesday night!  He let the boys stay up a bit later and we watched a Christmas movie - The Santa Clause 2!  (I find it kind of weird that Netflix has The Santa Clause 2 but not the first one...oh well).

Day 14 

On Wednesday we actually made it to the classroom for a bit.  Alyssa was feeling better.  And I found a couple of Christmas crafts at the store on Tuesday when Aaron and I were out for speech therapy.  So our activity for Wednesday was to complete these two crafts.  One was decorating a glitter foam tree with foam stickers and the other one was coloring wooden stand up Christmas figures.

We displayed them on the mantle when we were done.

Day 15
On Thursday we had Christmas pizza for supper!  I was going to make snowmen on them with pepperonis, but my pepperonis were bad :-(  So I just cut up red and green peppers and put all around the pizza.  It was super yummy!!

Day 16
Our activity on Friday was going to Christmas party - our homeschool group Christmas party :-)  Of course Alyssa didn't make it because of the croup...but the boys had a blast!

Aaron had fun trying to open a Christmas gift with oven mitts on!  LOL!  This was very funny for the parents to watch!

 We also had fun making gingerbread houses.

Day 17
On Saturday we made hot chocolate and watched A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Day 18
On Sunday our activity was to attend a Christmas play - well actually Alyssa just attended, the boys actually performed in the Christmas play at church :-)

Day 19
Well yesterday, Monday, I was sick... :-(  Still battling it some but am doing better today.  Yesterday I spent most of the day either sleeping, or in my chair.  Just really had no energy for anything else.  But my hubby was home all day and took the boys with him and his dad to go finish up some Christmas shopping - so I guess their Christmas activity for the day was Christmas shopping :-)  Alyssa just spent the day with Mommy.  We even took a nap together in my bed.  So hopefully that is not too big of a stretch for Christmas advent activities yesterday.

December School Wrap Up
Well we are officially done with December School.  Last week we only made it to the classroom one day due to Alyssa being sick and all.  But even on the days we didn't make it to the classroom we still watched our daily Christmas movie and every day the boys would all pile in the chair with me and we would play some of our school games on the ipad.

The day that we did make it to the classroom we had fun playing a scrabble game (one of the Scholastic games from my mom).  I used the bananagram tiles though and am hoping to, soon, introduce Seth to the game bananagrams  :-)  He really enjoyed the scrabble game.

And we won't be having school this week or next - so that we can have our Christmas break :-)  I have to admit though that I am looking forward to getting back at it in January (probably more excited than Seth - LOL!!!)

But it will be very sad that we won't have our lazy mascot joining us anymore.  I really wish I knew what happened to Rocky :-(  It is very sad.  He will be very much missed in our family.

Until next time,
Kellie

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!

It was so toasty that Rocky napped pretty much the whole time we were in there, even snoring at one point!

Until next time,
Kellie

Our Christmas Paintings and our Advent Calendar

I wanted to share with yall our Christmas pictures we made yesterday and the advent calendar I have put together for the kids!  I am so excited about all the fun December activities I have planned!

Christmas Paintings

Remember from the Thanksgiving posts our Fall Trees that we dot painted and put on the wall above the buffet?  Well I liked those pictures up on that wall so much that I have decided to make that our "child masterpiece" wall.  I have been trying to figure out a way to display my children's artwork and I feel that is my solution!  :-)  I am going to change it out each season (or every couple of months or so) with different pictures that they have made.

Since my big nativity scene sits on the buffet at Christmas time I decided I would get them to paint pictures that went with that to display through December.  So I printed off coloring pages of angels and stars and had the kids dot paint them (since they love that so much).  Seth also drew a picture of the entire nativity scene - that I put in in the middle. 

Here is a picture of the wall with the nativity scene on the buffet.

Here is a close up of Seth's nativity drawing - complete with 7 wise men (he has decided that there were more than 3...which he could be right...bible never said there were 3...just that they brought 3 gifts)

Here is Alyssa's beautiful angel :-)

Aaron's pretty dot painted star!

Seth also did a small star.

I was working on a small angel - and, of course, Alyssa helped.  (and I removed that picture hook to the left of the picture after I took this picture - LOL!)

Yesterday afternoon we had friends over for a play date!!  :-)  While the kids played, Angela and I played as well :-)  We made advent calendars for the month of December!

I decided to use my red pocket chart for my calendar.  We won't be using it for school this month so it worked out perfect.  I went to Target and got some cute cookie bags in the dollar spot, along with some cute ribbon and a 24 piece puzzle!

We cut out 24 green squares and wrote the numbers 1 to 24 on them and placed them in the chart.  And then I cut the bags to smaller sizes.  I took red pieces of paper and wrote activities for each day.  I folded up the piece of paper and put it in the middle of the bag cut out with a piece of the puzzle.  I then gathered up the bag and tied a piece of ribbon around it and stuck it next to one of the numbers in the pocket chart.

Here is a picture of the calendar on the wall with the puzzle board.

And a more close up of the advent calendar.

Here is the puzzle board.  This is a Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer puzzle.  When I saw that it had 24 pieces I thought how perfect!  Each piece is numbered and has a numbered spot on the board (you can see that I messed up my numbering - oh well).  Each day the kids will glue the next piece in place.

I have carefully planned out the activities, because I want us to actually stick to this and do it every day!  I have even covered our bases for times when I know that we will be busy or out of town (like on day 10 I put "Go to a Christmas Concert" because we will be at my parents going to see Denver and the Mile High Orchestra or the activity of "Doing something special with Daddy and PaPa" on the day that I will be hosting a Christmas party for my ladies bible study group at my house So Daddy and PaPa will be babysitting :-).

I have also made a print out of what activities I have on what day because there will be a little bit of planning that will be needed for certain activities, such as making sure I have the ingredients for baking cookies, or planning the treasure hunt (the prize will be a $1 for each child to go spend at Dollar Tree the next day when we go out for a Christmas treat).  

Also having a print out of the activities will be helpful if "life" happens and I need to do a bit of rearranging to make sure we can still do all the activities (for example the day I have for us to go look at Christmas lights...if something comes up and we can't go that day we can switch things around to make sure we don't miss that activity, and we are not left with a day without an activity).

It is going to be so fun!!  I will keep you updated, of course, with pictures :-)

Oh and one activity that I love doing as many days as possible - reading Christmas novels with a nice cup of coffee while the kids nap!  I started this tradition last year and loved it so much that I am doing it again this year!  I have one "real" book I am reading and I have several on my kindle as well!

I so love December!

Until next time,

Kellie