December a break from regular studdies

 OK, I realize that all these pictures are sideways, but for the sake of getting caught up, I will leave it.  This month between me being sick and J being off work for foot surgery and around the house we had a lighter month - we took time off of our regular studies with My Father's World and used a Unit study from Notgrass Company called  Celebrate the Season and we loved, loved, loved it!  The first part of the book took us through the bible covering both old testament prophecy and new testament account of the birth of Christ with fun pages to fill in and puzzles to complete and had us make a baby book for Jesus.  The second half of the book took us around the world learning about traditions, which fit in well with our regular studies.  We continued with our usual studies in Signapore Math, A reason for Handwriting, Spelling Power, Abeka Readers, Just Write, and First Language Lessons ( I just ordered Easy Grammar and Daily Grams for us to try this second semester.)

 We also took time to make cookies, decorate the house, make gifts and wrap gifts.  We also read the book The Christmas Doll and would recommend it to you all for next year (I cried a couple of times, making it hard to read-a-loud at times and giving my daughter a reason to pick on me for crying so easy).  For advent we read the book Jothams Journey - again I would recommend this, each day you read a section of the story and light your candles. To add to our collection of Christmas books(I put them out with the decorations and I always write the year we got them on the inside cover, we got The Legend of The Candy Cane, we had J is For Jesus the board book but this is a little longer version of a similar story.  We also watched a few Christmas movies - I just love the cheesy made for tv type holiday movies.  We watched The Best Christmas Pageant Ever a favorite of ours (a great read also), A Denis the Menace Christmas, Veggie Tales: Saint Nicholas.  I know there were a few others but again I didn't post it soon enough and I have totally forgotten now.  I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and took a little time off to enjoy the holidays.

yes, I know "You do Santa?!?" well I have to have a picture every year, we don't play it up hugely, we tell the kids it's a fun game to play, like believing their is a Yogi bear at the place we camp, and they leave him cookies and Pepsi ( since their da..errr Santa likes it better) and they get a present from him - which #1 totally knows who to thank for it.

 Christmas eve -#1 was a child and sang in our church program.

 Our traditional - Birthday Cake For Jesus, made with Grandma.