Playing and Resting

Our Christmas was relatively quiet and simple. Since we stayed at home here in Ohio, my parents travelled up from Georgia to celebrate with us, which is always nice. We attended our church's candlelight Christmas Eve service and returned home to enjoy our traditional "Low-Country Boil" and "Happy Birthday Jesus" Cake. The next day was spent amid three excited children playing with their gifts and taking joy in giving the grown-ups their gifts as well.

Over the weekend the girls and I took some sort of chest cold that throws us into fits of coughing, especially at night. I am praying for quick recovery, as I had several projects around the house I had planned on completing before beginning school again next week.

Meanwhile, we're enjoying just being lazy together here at home. Today as I rested on the couch the girls made delectable play-dough icecream treats for me with one of the gifts they received, and Superman stays busy working on the new Star Wars Lego set that Santa brought.

We're also celebrating (very lightly) the Twelve Days of Christmas, ending on January 6th, which was the way they did things in Medieval Times (our current unit study). More about that in another post.

Oh, and I'm reading this...



Havah is the poignant and vivid account of the first four chapters of Genesis as told through the voice of Eve. I've had a hard time putting it down.

I hope that you and your family are enjoying your Christmas break together!

Blessings,

Merry Christmas!

Praying that you all have a blessed Christmas with your family and friends,
as we celebrate the birth of Jesus our Savior.

Blessings

Making Merry With Mickey

We just returned from a wonderful week at the "happiest place on earth" - Disney World!

We were there Monday through Friday and hit three parks - Magic Kingdom (of course), Epcot, and Disney Hollywood Studios. Everything was all decorated for Christmas and just beautiful. One thing I like about Disney is that they play sacred Christmas carols along with other Christmas music over their sound system, and they don't mind putting up a manger scene or two!

We had so much fun, made some great memories, and took tons of photos - none of which I can upload right now, but I'll try later.

In the meantime, we're doing laundry, cleaning house, and getting ready for my parents to come tomorrow for Christmas - yay! We've got a couple of things planned for this week, but I'm really hoping we can settle in for some simple Christmas storytimes and do some fun baking in the kitchen together.

Praying that this blessed season is full of meaning for you this year.

Simple Christmas

This Christmas finds us practicing for the church Christmas program and getting ready to go out of town for a few days before the holiday. So...we're keeping things simple around here this year. We're enjoying our regular traditions...

-Trimming the tree - Kurt always sets up a musical train underneath, which the kids love!

-Nighttime drives to see Christmas lights. There's nothing sweeter than those shouts of glee from the backseat, as they point out all of the different decorations to Kurt and me.

-Playing with our child-friendly nativity - we have a plastic one and a wooden one, and both get much handling. :)

-Reading lots of wonderful Christmas stories together, including a sweet little advent calendar book that tells a little bit of the Christmas story each day.

-On Christmas Eve we'll bake a Happy Birthday Jesus Cake to be eaten the next day, attend our church's Christmas Eve candlelight service, and return home to do a little Nativity play for Daddy, Grandma, and Granddaddy - complete with bedsheet costumes, stuffed animal props, dialogue, and music - very fun!

Some new things we've done/will do this year...

-One day I got out the tempera paints, some butcher paper, and some stamped paint rollers and let the kids make homemade Christmas paper. It was really quite easy, and believe it or not, minimal mess and cleanup. The kids really enjoyed it, and especially liked the fact that their creations were going to be used to wrap gifts.

-Since we are studying Medieval Times we will be attempting a gingerbread castle after we return home from our trip - feel free to wish me luck with that!

I also wanted to share our units and activities from Christmases past. These links will take you to some of our favorite traditions such as Christmas books, ornaments to make, a recipe or two, and pictures of the annual Christmas play we do at home for Grandma and Granddaddy on Christmas Eve.

Around the Manger Unit

Christmas Symbols Unit

Other Christmas Posts

Hope you're enjoying the making of some special memories with your children this Christmas season!

We've Got a Winner!

Congratulations, Heather!

Please email me within the next three days at songofmyheartblog@yahoo.com with your four favorite scents
from Virginia Soaps and Scents along with your snail mail address.

Thanks to all of you for entering the contest and for visiting my blog!

Blessings,

Thanksgiving Crafts

I was browsing through my Google reader tonight looking for something fun to make with the kids tomorrow. I thought I'd share some of the cute craft ideas that are out there this season.

Coffee Filter Turkeys - I have always wanted to do some sort of coffee filter art with my kids and have never gotten around to it. I'm thinking this will be my choice for tomorrow. We've got the supplies, and the kids will love squirting water to make the colors run together. Very pretty, too!

Pumpkin Turkey Centerpiece

Groovy Gobblers - If we were at home with all of our paint supplies, we would definitely make these pretty turkeys.

Turkey Scratch Art Drawing

These last ideas would be wonderful ways for a family to express gratitude in the days and weeks leading up to Thanksgiving:

Thankful Tree

Thankful Box

Thankful Clothespin Wreath

Our Favorite Thanksgiving Books

Well, I did say you wouldn't hear much from me this week, we just arrived in Georgia tonight, and everyone's all settled in and asleep except for me. I'm wide awake because I took a long afternoon nap in the car.

It dawned on me that I haven't posted any of our favorite Thanksgiving books this year, so I decided to go ahead and do it even though we're only three days out from Turkey Day. Most of these are part of our Thanksgiving tradition, but I forgot to bring any of them with me! Hopefully I'll find a couple at the local library here tomorrow.


A delightful picture book showing the Indians and Pilgrims preparing for that first special feast. A favorite around here that we've read for several years now.


Funny illustrations tell the story of this old tune, as a family of turkeys travel to Grandma's for Thanksgiving - with a hunter in hot pursuit. This one always cracks us up!


I used this book in my first student teaching practicum. It's the story of a young girl name Maggie who lives with her Grandmother on a cranberry farm. Their special Thanksgiving dinner turns into a comical adventure as Mr. Whiskers and a smooth-talking city slicker vie for Grandma's attention - and her food! It wouldn't be Thanksgiving at our house without reading this fun tale.




This is one of my favorite versions of the Squanto story. We've read it for the last few years. It shows how God's hand worked in the life of Squanto. I never knew that Squanto traveled to Europe, heard the gospel, and more than likely became a Christian.




The illustrations are beautiful. The text would have been a bit much for my 4-year old, but just right for my 6 and 8-yr. olds.


This book tells the story of a real little girl who lived at Plimoth Plantation circa 1627. It is filled with wonderful photographs of Sarah and her family going about their day at Plimoth Plantation, the outdoor living museum of 17th century Plymouth, Mass. Also in this series are the two titles pictured below. All three really held my children's attention and are wonderful living history books.






I read Elizabeth Foss's review for this at Real Learning and was delighted when my library had it. It is out of print, but is a beautiful book that shows animals preparing for winter and people celebrating Thanksgiving. The illustrations make this one worth tracking down.

What are some of your family's favorite Thanksgiving stories?