Merry Christmas

Hope your Holiday is Blessed.
I'll be back to regular blogging by Monday.
In the mean time here are a couple of photos from our week.

A Few Decorated Cookies


A Christmas Lights Display at a home in our area
We stopped to see them Christmas Eve after church
It was such a warm evening for Dec.


More views of the lights (above and below)


These are all in one man's yard... he has so many lights and displays that the Electric Company had to give him his own transformer so he did not blow the lights on the whole street. He has a donation box and lots of people, including us, like the lights enough to help pay his electric bill.

I had to take a picture of the Grinch... in honor of the unit we did this Christmas!



And, Last but not least a picture of my dear, beautiful daughters. Dressed up after just coming home from the Christmas Eve service, where our family sang accapella as a part of the program. Hair curled and down is Jessica - Hair naturally curly but up is Rachel.

Honor the King of Kings this Christmas and all year long,
Merry Christmas,
Debbie

The Simple Woman's Daybook - December 22

FOR TODAY... Monday, December 22nd

Outside my window... This morning when I wrote this it was...bright and sunny and cold,
thank goodness after many days of rain, sleet, and gloom Now it is dark and cold and I am trying to stay awake and wait for my dh to come home... the rest was written this morning but posted tonight since I got busy and did not get back to add the picture and post it until now.

I am thinking... "when will my mom get here" concerned about her driving the 1 hour
drive from my sister's place where she lives to our house - she is 86 this year and still driving but it concerns me sometimes... will she get here without getting lost like she has in the past?

I am thankful... that the books we ordered from Vision Forum arrived today!!! We were not sure they would get here in time for Christmas! And thankful for the great deal we got... over $140 in free books due to the sale they had!!! YIPPEE!! More Great reading times ahead!!! They were gifts from my mom. Rachel got 4 books, Jessica got 5 books, Nathan got 2 books and a Henty on CD, Christopher got 3 books and I got 4 books. Thanks Mom!!!

From the learning rooms... finishing up on Nativity Lapbooks (two mini books today and two tomorrw then they just need to be glued together, otherwise on Christmas Break until Jan. 5th

From the kitchen... dd Rachel finishing the buckeyes and the kids and I, and mom if she arrives in time will be decorating some sugar cookies with icing. Pictures, I am sure, will be on my dd's blog later today or tomorrow.

I am wearing... blue pants, snow man turtleneck, snow man fleece top and slippers

I am creating... special Christmas ornaments, look for pictures later today on my blog.

I am going... shopping later for last minute items we need for Christmas day and for other regular needs like... we are out of dishwasher soap!! I have to wait for my mom to get here though so I can use her car. Dh is working 7am to 11:45 pm today and tomorrow so he can have off on Wed. and hopefully off on Friday! Pray for him if you will, those are two looooong days. He want to work this morning, he left at 6:15 and he will not be back until it is tomorrow morning at about 12:15 then 5 hours or so of sleep and then back to work for the same schedule on Tues. Also, pray the boss keeps his word and lets the guys all have Friday off!!

I am reading... Two from Gallilee but I have not had much time to read it lately, but I can't wait to get my hands on my new books from Vision Forum

I am hoping... we can go look at lights Christmas Eve since we have not had time to do that yet, and that it will be good weather that night for it.

I am hearing... noises from the kids watching Christmas movies and chatting loudly enough for me to hear them but I can't here what they are saying

Around the house... all cleaned up and ready for Christmas and for my mom to come

One of my favorite things... making a new ornament for each family member each year so when they get married and leave us they will have a stock of ornaments to take with them for their first tree with their new spouse.

A few plans for the rest of the week:
finish the ornaments, finish grocery shopping, finish my mom's gift - a calendar with pictures of our family on it, sing at the Christmas Eve service at our church, Christmas Day - enjoy the kids and time together, play games with the kids and my mom, finish the puzzle we are working on... whatever else comes up!

Here is picture thought I am sharing
Our Christmas Tree with gifts under it

Click the link to find the details of what to do for The Simple Woman's Daybook

Have a Wonder Filled Week,
Make a Memory with your kids,
Debbie

Meme - I've been tagged

I have been tagged for this Meme from my friend at http://daybydayinourworld.blogspot.com/

These are the rules: Pass this on to 5 blogging friends. Open the closest book to you, not your favorite or most intellectual book, but the book closest to you at the moment, to page 56. Write the 5th sentence, as well as two to five sentences following that.

Since I am sitting at my computer desk I have numerous books available and at equal distance to my reach. These include: Senior High: A Home-Designed Form+U+La, All Through the Ages, The Complete Home Learning Sourcebook, A BUNCH of Homeschool Magazines, Homeschooling at the Speed of Light, Books Children Love, Little House in the Big Woods, Building Blocks for a Building Marriage, and Inspirational Christmas Crafts.

But the book I choose to do my tagging on. Age of Opportunity: A Biblical Guide to Parenting Teens by Paul David Tripp. Page 56 the 5th sentence says " The Bible presents God as someone who is near and active in our lives." The sentences follow with," The psalmist says that he is an "an ever-present help in trouble"(Ps. 46:1). There is no divine 911 telephone line because God is already here and already active. There is never a moment in which God is absent or inactive. There is never a situation, location, or relationship that he does not rule."

I am tagging:
Rachel and Jessica (my dd's) at Young Homemakers
Chasity at Seasons of a Godly Woman
Leslie at Journey to Simplicity
Michele at Ramblings
Heidi Jo at Bahama Homeschooler

Debbie

Unplugged Challenge from last week

Fluffy - Pom Poms for Peace (Weekly Unplugged Project)

I have been busy with Christmas preparations and have not taken the time to blog so this is late.

This also counted as one of our Advent Calendar Activities since I put the Unplugged Challenge on a card in their Advent Calendar.

We had a "ball" (LOL) making the pompoms today. I made a giant one for my room as you will see from the pictures below.

These are the pompoms we sent to Pompom International




Nathan and his pompom

Christopher and his pompom

My pompom

This pompom I made for my room!!

The purple pompom 3 1/3 inches wide - the big multi-color pompom 5 inches wide.

There is still time to join the fun for this week, go to Unplug Your Kids for details.

Debbie

Wordless Wednesday and Advent Crafts

Directions for Candy Cane Hearts click link then scan down or just look at ours and make your own

Christopher's Heart

Nathan's Heart

Snowman Ornament - we made it instead of the magnet or pin click the link for instructions

Christopher's Snowman

Nathan's Snowman

Debbie

The Simple Woman's Daybook

FOR TODAY Tuesday, December 9th ...

Outside my window... cloudy and cold looks like it will snow

I am thinking... that I have a lot to do today

I am thankful for... my daughters

From the learning rooms... we are working on many Advent Activities including a Grinch Lapbook

From the kitchen... nothing much... my dd 22 has been taking over that department

I am wearing... my bathrobe still... I need to get in the shower

I am creating... Christmas cards and a Grinch craft with the boys today

I am going... to Bible study later - studying Daniel by Beth Moore

I am reading... Two From Galilee for myself, Dragon and the Raven to the boys, and Christmas books to the boys, and Little House in the Big Woods to the boys

I am hoping... to be able to make my ornaments... I have supplies I still need to find locally or I will have to make something else

I am hearing... music from my daughter being on my husband's laptop.. she does not like the music and is trying to turn it off and can't figure it out LOL she just found it now I only hear the trucks on the street, her occasional comments, and me yelling for my son to get out of bed

Around the house... decorations are up.. I have some cleaning and organizing to do... have to unpack from my weekend at my mom's

One of my favorite things... blogging

A few plans for the rest of the week:
Advent Activities, Grinch lapbook, More Reading

Here is picture thought I am sharing...

Our Bethlehem Village decoration - it lights up

http://thesimplewomansdaybook.blogspot.com/

Homeschool Weekly #16

This week we started our Christmas Unit. We are doing the lapbook You're a Mean one Mr. Grinch from Live and Learn. You can find it at CurrClick if you want to check it out for possible purchase.

The boys did three mini books a day.

They are also continuing to do activities from our Advent Chalendar, see the post Advent Calendar Resources by scrolling down or clicking this link.
Advent Activities for the week included:
A Christmas Carol Quiz of sorts
Picking Jesus Helpers
Doing the Think Challenge
Doing the Unplugged Challenge
Read a Christmas book of their choice
Give a Hug Day
Wear Red or Green Day


We are continuing our Artist and Composer Studies. This week they did mini books for Bach that I got from HomeschoolShare.com. I got three mini books from their site. Here is the direct link to the first pdf. Here is the direct link to the second pdf. Here is the direct link to the third pdf, it is a Composer Childhood page that can be used for any composer. Here is the link to the page I found the pdf links on. It is a page of Miscellaneous Lapbook Templates, scan down to Composer to find the Bach and Childhood pdf's. And, you can find more study tools here including a pdf of some notebooking pages and many other things to enhance your study.

or you can do notebooking pages from NotebookingPages.com scroll down until you see the pdf for Bach.

They filled in the mini books using information from The Gift of Music and from Color the Classics - Color the Godly Composers

They also listened to Bach's Brandenberg Concerto #6 again and Mr. Bach Comes to Call on cd.


Math the same as usual.
Copywork/Language Arts the writing for the lapbook on the Grinch and the Bach mini books.
Grammar - continuing with Operation English Grammar lapbook


Hope you had a Joy filled week,
Debbie

Unplugged Challenge

You can find the Unplugged challenge here:
http://www.unplugyourkids.com/

The challenge for this week was weather.
We decided to play with the fake snow that we purchased a while back. It was really fun.

Here is the website where you can buy some for yourself
http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/product/1445

or check out the other quantities and products at
http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/category/weather

close up!!

Nathan and his batch of snow


Christopher and his batch of snow

As I said on the Think Challenge post this counted as one of our Advent Calendar activities.

Have a great week,
Debbie

Think! Challenge of the Week

You can find the Think! challenge here http://kidswhothink.blogspot.com/

The think challenge for this week was to tell your kids to collect 7 rocks. Don't tell them why. Just tell them that they should be bigger than 2 inches and different sizes and shapes. When they come back, have them stack the rocks as high as possible. As always, send your pics.

Here are our pics:

Nathan's First Try - 4 inches, pretty good


Nathan's Second Try - 5 inches - Great!


Christopher's Choice of Rocks and his pile - 3 inches - Pretty Good!

This counted as one of our Advent Activities too, I put a card in the pocket for each week of our Advent Calendar for the boys to do the Think Challenge and the Unplugged Challenge.

Have a Great Day,
Debbie

Advent Calendar Resources

I used the Advent Calendar pockets from

click on the box above then scan down to Gifts and the Advent Calendar I used is gift #3. I decided not to use the verses since we are doing other devotions as a family. Instead of using the verses I put cards with activities for each day in the pockets. I gathered the activities from around the internet and will list some of the sites below. I have tried to choose a variety of activities. Some of them take some planning and some extra purchases and some of them only require what we have on hand at home or are activities we would be doing anyway.

Each week on Sunday I have put a card in for us to choose people to be Jesus Helpers to. For details of this see my dd's blog at http://younghomemakers.blogspot.com/2008/11/jesus-helpers.html

Here are some of the other sites and activities:

Make Candy Cane Hearts Glue candy canes(2) together into a heart shape. Make a ribbon loop & glue to back at junction of heart shape. Glue jingle bell onto bottom of heart point & glue bow on top of heart point.

Make the Hershey Kiss Angel

Make Cinnamon Ornaments Mix 1 cup cinnamon and 1 cup applesauce with 1 Tablespoon of white glue. You want a consistency that can be rolled with a rolling pin but not quite as sticky or it will stick to your counter! Sprinkle counter with cinnamon and roll out dough and cut with cookie cutters. Cut a hole in shape with the straw so you will be able to hang them. Let dry about 24 hours. They shrink as they dry. Cut lengths of gold thread, make loops and hang. they will keep their scent for a few years. Refresh scent with cinnamon fragrance oil.

Make Personalized Ornaments to Treasure

About.com Christmas links

specifically the Advent Calendar activities and a homeschool mom's post

Go Christmas shopping at a dollar store for your brothers and sisters. Wrap your Christmas presents.

Make Christmas cookies and share them with friends and neighbors.

Make and eat a special Christmas treat.

Read the family's favorite storybook about the birth of baby Jesus.

Visit a Live Nativity Scene.

Watch the family's favorite Christmas movie together.

Walk or drive around neighborhoods to see Christmas lights (bring hot chocolate and think "sleigh ride").

Give a Hug Day.

Have a candlelight dinner complete with Christmas music.

"Jingle Bell Day" (Wear jingle bells and sing "Jingle Bells).

"Wear Red or Green Day"

Make a bird seed treat for our fine feathered friends.

Family Game Night

Make a Christmas ornament.

Pretend to be a newspaper journalist and write a news article for the Bethlehem Post for the day after Jesus was born.

Write your part to go into the family Christmas newsletter.

Help stuff and stamp Christmas cards.

Write a note about what makes your brothers or sisters special and put it in their Christmas stocking.

Family Photo Night (look through the old family albums and tell about special Christmas of the past.

Make and Put on The Nativity Story Shadow Puppet Play from Homeschool in the Woods Mini-Study of Christmas scroll down the page to pdf of the play, a red button that says Click Here for "The Nativity Story" Shadow Puppet Play.

Decorate Every Door of your house

Watch The Santa Clause, The Santa Clause 2 and the Santa Clause 3 all in one day.

Make a Card for a Soldier in the Armed Forces mail to:

Holiday Mail for Heroes
PO Box 5456
Capitol Heights, MD 20791-5456

details at http://www.redcross.org/email/saf/

Other sites with good activities:

Online Advent Calendar

Christmas Printables at A to Z Teacher Stuff

Christmas Activities at Activity Village

Christmas Activities at ABC Teach - some free some for members only (I am not a member)

Creative Kids at Home

Christmas World

Ultimate Winter Resource for Teachers

All Things Christmas

DLTK holiday site

Enjoy your Christmas Season

Make memories with your kids,

Debbie

Be Still Sunday

Giveaway at Learning At His Feet

I wanted to let you all know about a giveaway at Learning At His Feet She is giving away a copy of "The Missing Link: Found" a book about creation. To check out the website and sign up for the giveaway go to the link above. I signed up.

Debbie

Homeschool Weekly #15 - Sickness

This was not a good week for school. We have had much sickness. Monday ds Christopher had a bad sore throat and stayed in bed. Ds Nathan argued about doing school but my dh put his foot down and ds Nathan did his school on the computer and his math.

Tuesday dh Christopher was coughing but his sore throat was gone. We sort of did school. Just the basics.

Wednesday ds Nathan woke up with a sore throat. Argued about having to stay in bed. Had the whole house in an uproar. I gave in to save my sanity. He spent the day on the recliner. Ds Christopher did school on the computer and his math.

Thursday ds Nathan woke saying his throat still hurt a little bit and he did not sleep well. So he stayed in bed for the morning and took a nap and got up after lunch. Christopher did school on the computer and his math.

Friday Dd Rachel 22 woke up with a sore throat. Nathan was well enough that the boys did regular school. We watched Bach's Fight for Freedom for our composer study. Did pages 55-62 from The Human Body, 100 Reproducibles for Science. The science topics included senses, nose, ear; and ear, nose, and throat connection which was very timely considering their sore throats and cold. For History they worked on more mini books for the Viking Lapbook. We also read a chapter of The Dragon and the Raven.

So today... dd Jessica, dh Court and I are trying not to get sick. Taking vitamins, extra vitamin C, and garlic. Dh is working overtime today as he did Thursday and Friday nights and has to work overtime Mon-Wed. in order to have Friday off. That will be a good 4 day weekend though. I hope he does not get sick because he gets no sick days and gets penalized for being out of work for any reason and gets double penalties for being out on overtime days like today. So please pray he does not get this. Hopefully the fact that his is out of the house all day and working overtime also will help, since he is getting minimal exposure.

We are supposed to work in the nursery at church tomorrow but now I have to find replacements because of our sickness. Hopefully no one will be sick over Thanksgiving break but I am not holding out much hope there... and it will probably be me!! I pray not though. I hope your week was better than ours.

I hope next week will be better for us though we only have 3 days of school to get through.

Heal those who are sick Lord,
Debbie


ps - I just noticed when reading another persons blog post that my Homeschool Weekly # should correspond with how many weeks of school we have done not how many the host has done. So I changed my title from Homeschool Weekly #11 to #15. I will also go back and change the other titles so the weeks correspond to our total school weeks.

Snow

I just thought I would post these pictures. We do not usually get snow this early in the year. This is actually the third day we have had snow in Delaware this week but this snow actually stuck to the ground and plants. It is so pretty!

Enjoy God's Creation

the view across the street

our yard

out the kitchen window


out the front door



our neighbors plants, they used to stand straight up but they look really pretty this way

Have a blessed day,
Debbie

Thankful Thursday

Today I am thankful for the job my husband has. He is not happy about the new policies the company keeps implementing or the amount of pay. But, since his injury 4 + years ago and being out of work for 3 1/2 of those I am thankful he is working at all. The income is about 1/2 of what he was making before the injury, which happened at work, but we are surviving. I am thankful in this poor economy that he has work at all.

Thank you Lord for ultimately being our Great Provider
Hebrews 11: 39-40 "And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise: God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect."

Give Thanks
Debbie

Forest Lapbook

I finally got time to put our Forest Lapbook from last year on here. Below you will see one slide show and then the details of where I found all the pieces. Enjoy!!

Cover photos found on Google Image Search
we also found the World Forests maps from Google Image Search

A lot of information can be found here which is a part of this website

specific mini book info and pictures:
Temperate Deciduous Forest
Deciduous Forest Leaves
Leaf Terms
Animals of the Forest

And from this website:
these mini books with info and pictures can be found
Northern Boreal Forest (Taiga)
Temperate Rainforests of North America
Deciduous Forests

The Conifer mini book came from The World of Plants by Dinah Zike

The two mini booklets that have the name Winterthur in them came from field trips we took last year to Winterthur Museum and Country Estate. We had a years membership and greatly enjoyed getting to go walk in their gardens all year round and hope to get a membership there again in the spring.

The Deciduous Forest Features mini came from the sample of the Forest Habitats at HOAC - download the sample or buy the whole lapbook if you can.

The Big Tree in the 4th section of Christopher's book and second section of Nathan's is from Ranger Rick's Naturescope Trees are Terrific

I could not find the source I used for the Life Cycle of a Conifer page but if you do a google image search you will find a number of good pictures you could use for this.

Debbie

Homeschool Weekly #14

We had a good week. I am only going to tell you about the things we did this week different from the regular daily stuff. So if you want to know what we do for Math and Language see my other Homeschool Weekly Posts - scroll down or click on the label Homeschool Weekly at the bottom of this post.

For History we covered:

Mystery of History Lessons 47-52
Lessons included Otto I and the Holy Roman Empire - Leif Ericson Discovers America

The Story of the Middle Ages chapter clvi (Otto I)

Blackline Maps of World History - Middle Ages - Map5 Holy Roman Empire

Choosing Your Way Through the World's Medieval Past - Adventure 7 - Upon the Viking Sea

and on Friday the boys worked, on their own, making mini books for a Viking Lapbook they are doing together. We are making it up ourselves, not a purchased one. They are each taking different topics and putting it together in one Lapbook. I will post pictures when we are done.

For Historical Fiction we are reading The Dragon and the Raven - see my Shelfari or previous Homeschool Weekly posts for details. This week we actually made progress and read chapters 3-6. I am really getting caught up in the book and so are the boys. Oh, one thing I did to help was to download the book into the boys/school computer which is in the living room. It makes it much easier and more convenient for reading. They get to sit more comfortably in the living room and sometimes even work on Lego projects quietly while I read.

For Science we finally progressed in our section on the Nervous System due to dh getting me ink so I could print. So here is science:

Lyrical Life Science - Human Body "Nervous System" song and worktext pages

The Body Book pages 78-87

The Human Body, 100 Reproducibles pages 43-50

Science Pocket: Human Senses & Body Parts by Dinah Zike ( one of her older books) page 3 "You've Got a Lot of Nerve!" (the link above takes you to a couple of copies on Amazon. (there were other copies here also)

We also got back to doing Art Study and Music Study this week. I decided to jump in and do the Ambleside Online list for Art Study and Composer Study since I have not been choosing it on my own. It was good to get back to it. For Art they are doing Botticelli and for music Bach. I did not do any pictures from the Art Study that include scantily dressed or not dressed humans. I choose other works of art by going to the Wikipedia site and downloading those prints I wanted to do instead. I go the link from Ambleside online but I will past it here for you to see. Sandro Botticelli at Wikipedia. Click on thumbnails to see the full view of the picture and to see the public domain tag. The Wikipedia page does have scantily dressed and not dressed humans so please view the pages here and on Ambleside without your children in the room. Then print out the only the ones you want to study. All the pictures on Wikipedia that I printed were public domain. Be careful also of books you borrow from the library if you are trying to avoid exposing your children to this. Keep the books only for your use in reading portions to them and keep them out of site at other times. For Composer Study this week we did The Story of Bach in Words and Music and listened to the Brandenburg Concerto #6. For Art we looked at the Mystical Nativity you can find it at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Mystical_nativity.jpg and the boys did a narration of the details they remembered from the print.

Nathan also did some Robotics - working on his Lego Mindstorms.

Yesterday, we also had the opportunity to see Expelled, No Intelligence Allowed at a movie night at church sponsored by the college and career age Sunday School class. The movie was very good and afterward we had discussion at the church as a group and then we discussed it further on the way home and stopped for sundaes at McDonald's. The movie was very thought provoking and I would like to see it again because there was so much in there. In case you do not know what the movie is about it is about the Intelligent Design vs. Evolution controversy and the inability of the
secular scientific community to accept the possibility of someone having intelligence having designed our world and the universe. You can find a review of the movie here as well as elsewhere on the internet I am sure.

Make a memory with your kids this coming week,
Debbie