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.

Norway weeks 12-13

 Well here it is January and I am just getting around to posting again.  We spent time studying Norway and some surrounding countries.  The bad thing about me not posting sooner is I have already forgotten all the fun things we did while studying these couple of weeks.  We did read the book Heidi and watch the movie I still want dds to see the Shirley Temple version someday, we also watched the movie the Silver Skate which DD1 really liked and the girls were skating around here for awhile on catalog pages on the carpet lol.

 They made rosemalling(their version anyway) patterned chest from our art book Global Art.

 We borrowed a friends waffle maker to make some Belgium Waffles.

 they made another art project from our Global Art book again totally her version - I don't know if this is a good creative thing but she never wants to follow the example lol.

 some of our Children Around the World coloring pages - #2 always wants to color the people, but I can't get her to use more than 1 color.

#1 had her Christmas Piano Recital during this time too.

Exploring Countries and Cultures week 9-11 - Brazil

 Here Molly is playing her Brazilian flute we made using out Global Art book

 We had a field trip to our local fire station - "we know a guy"

My Friend is the wife of a fireman and she arranged a the field trip for us and a couple of other families at church who teach their kids at home also.

 Cooking in Brazil - we made these tasty treats and the meat stew and as a side note the girls also talked me into buy a chocolate bar at Aldi's the other day because it said "Ecuador chocolate on it"

 In math we have been doing some measurements with grams, ounces and what not, so we got the scale out - actually the scale DH uses for our Awana club to weigh cars.

 We made these MAF planes after Finishing our read a loud Nate Saint in the Christian Hero's series from WYAM

 an animal puzzle book I picked up this summer - Rain forest page

 Our experiment with arches and eggs to see how strong they are

 13 books and I think if our eggs were closer in height it may have held up much longer

 Making an anaconda for art. The kids have now named it Anna and it looks like she is here to stay for awhile.  It's 2 wire hangers unbent with a sheet wrapped around it and then painted, so it's now bendable. From Global Art

 we experimented on how birds feathers have oil that keeps them dry by running paper feathers under water, on sprayed with oil first.

 The highlight of our school year so far!!!! This is a friend of mine from Bible study, I knew she had been a missionary in Eudora at one time and lost her husband at the time in a plane crash.  I invited her over to lunch to share with us about her time in Ecuador.  AMAZING - she met her late husband while serving as a missionary as a teacher to missionary kids in Ecuador.  He grew up there the son of an MAF pilot, became a MAF pilot.  Well not only that but they knew Rachel Saint personally and actually called her aunt.  She has also met Elizabeth Elliot and had pictures of Acua Indians and shared some amazing stories about the people and how her and her husband would fly in and stay the weekend with tribes.  She then showed us pictures of the Shell Mera house/Nate Saint house.

 Some more geography vocab cards

 we didn't have any Brazilians to color, but while in South America we did a brief study of Venezuela.

 I don't need to do this, but I have been testing at the end of each area and #1 got all the SA countries right!
I know we did other things and read great books, but since I haven't been very timely in my posting I have since forgotten.