Twas the Night Before Christmas

I just saw part of this poem as a friends status on Facebook. I am planning to read it to my children on Christmas Eve this year. It is so beautiful I wanted to share it will all of you!
Katie

The Night Before Christmas
A more spiritual version of the famous Christmas story

By: Sister St. Thomas, B.N.D. de N

Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the town,
St. Joseph was searching, walking up roads and down;
Our Lady was waiting, so meek and so mild,
While Joseph was seeking a place for the Child.

The children were nestled, each snug in their beds,
The grown-ups wouldn't bother, there's no room they said;
When even the innkeeper sent them away,
Joseph was wondering, where they would stay.

He thought of the caves in the side of the hills,
Lets go there said Mary, it's silent and still;
The moon on the breast of the new fallen snow,
Made pathways of light for their tired feet to go.

And there in a cave, in a cradle of hay,
Our Savior was born on that first Christmas Day!
The Father was watching in heaven above,
He sent for His angels, His couriers of love.

More rapid than eagles God's bright angels came;
Rejoicing and eager as each heard his name;
Come Power, Come Cherubs, Come Virtues, Come Raphael,
Come Thrones and Dominions, come Michael and Gabriel.

Now fly to the Earth, where My poor people live,
Announce the glad tiding My Son comes to give;
The Shepherds were watching their flocks on this night,
And saw in the heavens and unearthly light.

The Angels assured them, they'd nothing to fear,
It's Christmas they said, the Savior is here!
They hastened to find Him, and stood at the door,
Till Mary invited them in to adore.

He was swaddled in bands from His head to His feet,
Never did the Shepherds see a baby so sweet!
He spoke not a word, but the shepherds all knew,
He was telling them secrets and blessing them too.

Then softly they left Him, The Babe in the hay,
And rejoiced with great joy on that first Christmas Day;
Mary heard them exclaim as they walked up the hill,
Glory to God in the Highest, Peace to men of good will!

St. Lucy Day

Well St. Lucy day has come and gone! We began the morning by making our St. Lucy crowns. I cut out leaf shapes from green construction paper along with little red circles for berries and white candles with orange "flames". The girls got right to gluing. As you can see in the finished product on their heads Snow White was much more meticulous about covering up the brown head band than Flower Picker!



Last year I made a homemade St. Lucy bread (gluten free at that!) which I was much more pleased with than I was with this years bread. Here is last years picture!



I attempted to do the super easy from the can method from Catholic Icing but for some reason the "rolls" did not rise. I don't know if I played with them too much trying to braid them together or if I used the wrong pan...anyway they still tasted fine (especially with lots of yummy icing!). For dinner we had Chicken and pasta with white sauce (for St. Lucy the Virgin). We didn't have any canned Alfredo sauce so I made my own using this recipe. In my humble opinion it was better than restaurant sauce! A little garlicy but so so tasty!!

We also talked about the story of St. Lucy and enjoyed the St. Lucy felt board story from Holy Heros Advent Adventures. All in all it was a nice morning! Hope everyone enjoyed the festivities!

On another note I wanted to post our finished Our Lady of Guadalupe bean pictures. So here they are!



I didnt have the colors I wanted so we dyed Lentils with blue coloring turning them greenish and dyed white beans red for Our Lady's Dress. I found the idea on Our Little Catholic Corner which was linked on Catholic Icing. I had the girls "paint" the glue onto the drawing with a Q-tip so that it would be spread evenly. They loved this craft and I am looking forward to using beans in our crafts more often!

Katie

I is for Ice Cream, Indians, Island and Isthmus!

Letter I week was a mishmash of different I things. We began by making our own ice cream after reading the book Ice Cream written and Photographed by: William Jaspersohn. We used this recipe and it was quite tasty!

How to Make Your Own Ice Cream

* 1 tablespoon sugar
* 1/2 cup milk
* 1/4 teaspoon vanilla
* 6 tablespoons rock salt (or regular salt if you can’t find rock salt)
* 1 gallon size Ziploc bag
* 1 pint size Ziploc bag
* Ice

1. Fill the gallon size bag (the larger bag) with ice about half way and add the salt and seal it.
2. Mix the sugar, milk and vanilla in the small pint sized bag and seal it.
3. Open up the large bag and put the small bag inside and seal the large bag again.
4. Shake the bag and you’ll see your mixture in the small bag turn into ice cream! (It will take about 5 minutes of shaking)
Open up the small bag and enjoy!!

We also read Ice Creams for Rosie.

For our study of Indians we began by reading the book The Legend of Ohio by Dandi Daley Mackall.



We talked about the type of home that the Indians in the story lived in and then look at this site to learn about other types of Native American Homes and then about headdresses. Then Snow White made her own Feather Headdress....flower picker was too busy playing barber shop to make one!



This week we read the My First Little House books based on the Little House books By: Laura Ingalls Wilder. The girls enjoyed them so much that we picked up one that was out last week to read this week too!



This past Wednesday, December 8th, was the feast of the Immaculate Conception and Snow White colored a cute coloring page designed by Lacy from Catholic Icing. She was very proud of the result!



Finally we studied some landforms this week, an island and its opposite form a lake and isthmus and its opposite a strait. I have some sandpaper montessori land and water form cards that I got from a Montessori Swap group for much cheaper than retail! They have sandpaper to represent the land and the smooth wood painted blue to represent the water. This picture shows the isthmus and strait and the bay and its corresponding peninsula.



We then made a land and water forms book which we will add on to as we learn the rest of the land and water forms. Her are Snow Whites island/lake and isthmus/strait. I was really happy with how they turned out.





I cut out the shapes and she colored the land or water as needed. She then wrote the name of the land/water form on the top of the page and dictated the definition (with a little help for the isthmus/strait!) and I wrote them in.

Overall I was really pleased with our school week this week. Everyone slept pretty well at night which helps me to be more productive! Next week we are planning some Jam activities for letter J, a study of Japan and some math with jewels!

Katie

Advent Activities

Even though we are well into Advent at this point I thought I would post our advent activities. To begin advent the girls made their own mini advent wreaths like the ones seen on Catholic Icing We combined her idea for making the wreath with her genius idea to "paint" the candles with melted crayon wax! All the supplies came from the dollar store and the cost was only $4 to make 2 wreaths. Both Flower Picker and Snow White are proud to light their wreaths each evening!





We read a prayer for advent each night when lighting our candles and then sing the appropriate verses of "Light the Advent Candle" Here are the lyrics to the song
(The tune is the same as "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" Thanks to Lacy for making me think about it!)

Advent Song


1. Light the Advent candle one
Now the waiting has begun
We have started on our way
Time to think of Christmas day.

Chorus:
Candle, candle burning bright
Shining in the cold winter night
Candle, candle burning bright
Fill our hearts with Christmas light.

2. Light the Advent candle two
Think of humble shepherds who
Filled with wonder at the sight
Of the child on Christmas night.

3. Light the Advent candle three
Think of heavenly harmony
Angels singing "Peace on Earth"
At the Blessed Savior's birth.

4. Light the Advent candle four
Think of Joy forever more
Christ child in a stable born
Gift of love that Christmas morn.

5. Light the Christmas candles now
Sing of Donkey, Sheep and cow
Birthday candles for the king
Let the Alleluias ring.

We also have been following Holy Heroes Advent Adventure this Advent and it has been wonderful. They have a video for each day of advent explaining some aspect of Advent or the feast of the day. They also post a video for the Jesse Tree ornament of the day. You can see our Jesse Tree below. It has many more ornaments on it now!



We have celebrated the feast of St Nicholas this year with a party in our home school co-op group complete with a visit from St. Nick himself. We also watched the CCC movie of St. Nicholas the boy who became Santa.

Yesterday we celebrated the feast of the Immaculate Conception with a trip into Pittsburgh to see the Vatican Splendors exhibit that is being held at the history museum there.




It was really neat and the children did very well. Snow White learned a lot and we made it through with no alarms sounding! ( a man told us if you touch the glass on some of the displays an alarm will sound!). We then went out to dinner and to Mass (which it seemed as if we didnt attend since we spent it all in the back with a very disagreeable Do-Do boy!). Overall it was a great day had by all some wonderful memories made on a special day!

Today we are celebrating the feast of Juan Diego. We read The Story of Our Lady of Guadalupe Empress of the Americas by C. Lourdes Walsh this morning



and I have a dried bean Our Lady of Guadalupe craft planned for this afternoon! Be sure to check over at Catholic Icing and enter in the CCC giveaway to win a free copy of JUAN DIEGO - MESSENGER OF GUADALUPE! I am entered for sure! It is one of the CCC videos we do not own.

We have had a full Advent so far and look forward to continuing our preparations for Christs birth on Christmas!

Finally here is a picture of our prayer table this advent.

H is for Habitat

So it has taken a while to get this post up! We took this week off to celebrate Thanksgiving with family in town.

Our H week went pretty well although as usual we didn't get to everything I had planned! We read books (which I forgot to take a picture of this week sorry:( on different animal habitats including the desert, meadow, forest, rainforest, ocean, and the river/pond. We then colored pictures of animals from each place to stick up on our habitat poster seen below ( not all the animals are on yet...Snow White is a very meticulous color-er!)



To finish off our habitat study I have cards for matching the animal name to its home. Here is an example of one of the pages. I got them from taking an online montessori class with Karen Tyler. Her albums have been very useful although I have not been able to stick with a "pure" montessori environment in our home!



We were also busy making Thanksgiving decorations handprint turkeys for place settings on the table. This picture also shows our gourd basket that decorated our Thanksgiving table



and our local library had a turkey craft time where we made paper bag turkeys that are so cute!


Well I think that's all from H week! This week is I week and I is for Indians and Ice Cream! The plan is to make our own Ice Cream! I am also hoping to post some of our advent activities!

Katie

G is for

Well G week has come and gone! Another 2 week letter week....not because I was so full of activities but because we had a trip to New England to visit family for a week and school (although I brought it with us) just didn't seem to happen!

G is for Geometry! For lack of anything better to study and although it is not the sound of G I was going for with my 3 year old we spent the week learning about shapes. We read a variety of great shapes books from our library.



We went on a shape hunt to find shapes in the living room of my in-laws house. I was surprised at how many my 3 year old was able to find on her own. I am finding more and more that she knows so much more that I have taught her! We made tessellations! I remember doing these in geometry class in high school and one of our books talked about them so I thought that Snow White would enjoy making one. She chose the trapezoid from our Geometric cabinet (a harder shape than I would have chosen!) and she got started. It turned out really well and she was very proud of it.



Flower Picker did track a triangle one time put then she had enough! She is still working on the tracing skills!

We also learned about solid shapes compared with flat shapes and used our geometric solids
Both girls really enjoyed using them.



Our author this week was Mirra Ginsburg. We read a varitey of her books including Do-Do's favorite:

Good Morning Chick

And a childhood favorite of mine

How the Sun Was Brought Back to the Sky

Overall I was pleased with what we got done and the amount learned this week. I am really looking forward to H week. H is for Habitats. Snow White can't wait!

Here is one last picture I thought worth sharing! Everyone at work on their handwriting!!!



Katie

All Saints Day Fun!

We had a great day on All Saints Day yesterday. Our co-op group had an All Saints party and all the children dressed up. They all had a blast. They went Saint or treating in the bedrooms upstairs where older siblings were dressed as saints handing out candy, played saints bingo, did a cake walk and made their own saint medals. Here are some photos to sum it up!


A group shot.....in case you can't tell we had 5 Mary's!!


Another attempt to get everyone in!


St. Therese and the Immaculate Heart of Mary


David the Shepard boy

F is for Fire Safety

Well here is all I have from F week....this is the second week that we have attempted letter F and it has not been much more successful than the first! We have been reading books on fire safety

because after a recent trip to the fire station I realized that Snow White didn't even know about 911. So we have touched on 911 and emergencies, her address and phone # (she knows her address but we still have some work on the phone!), what to do if there is a fire, we have tested and cleaned our smoke detectors, and learned all about fire trucks and fire fighters. Here is the only project we did related to fire safety!



I am hoping to work a little more on parts of a flower tomorrow and have her label her own drawing of a flower. (snow white already knows them so it would be a good review and some writing practice!)

We have had some fall fun lately along with our F activities! We had a trip to the pumpkin patch with Granny and some fun in the leaves in our back yard.



So F is for Fall Fun too!!

Katie

I'm still alive!

Well its been a while since I had the time/energy/motivation to post! A lot has happened in the last few months! The main reason I have been on hiatus is that I am expecting baby #4 in March! This has been by far the most difficult pregnancy I have had. Morning sickness...actually all day sickness...which seemed to be never ending, fatigue, hot flashes and on and on!

It is really funny though after a few weeks which I thought would never end I can't imagine that I really felt that bad! It is really amazing how memory works. It is like that for me in labor too....at the time I feel like I might die...but just a short while after giving birth I seem to think it wasn't all that bad. There must be some sort of selective memory function for mothers!!!

Anyway in the midst of all the sickness, my husband started a new job working 2nd shift which has been an adjustment to say the least and I started homeschooling my 5 year old. It has been going relatively well all things considered! We are following the alphabet path from the Serendipity blog. We are already beginning letter F this week

Here's a quick recap with no pictures since I didn't have the energy or presence of mind to take out the camera (one of my main purposes for blogging in the first place *sigh*)

A is for apples. We read some books about apples and apple orchards and we cut apart an apple to see the star shape inside. A is for ants we read a book about ants and made an ant hill drawing with raisins for ants. A is for Alligator we read about alligators and painted a giant alligator. Finally A is for Air we read a book about air and did some air experiments with balloons and bubbles. We also read books by the author Frank Asch



B is for Birds. We read bird books all week and played a matching game with parts of a bird cards, learned about bird feet and matched bird tracks to the correct bird, painted a bird and looked at where different birds live. We also did Bubble painting by putting dish soap, food coloring and water in a baking pan, blew bubbles in with a straw and then set a piece of white paper on the bubbles to make a bubble print! We read books by Jan Brett.



C is for clouds we read the Cloud book by Tommie de Paola and made cotton ball clouds. C is for continents we traced the continents from our big continent puzzle,
colored them in and drew on a landmark for each continent, Grand Canyon North America, Rain forests South America, Penguins Antarctica, Desert Africa, Castles Europe, Great Wall of China Asia and the Great Barrier Reef Australia. We read books by author Eric Carle.



D is for Dinosaurs. We read lots of dinosaur books, looked at our dinosaur figures to separate carnivores from herbivores, drew a picture of what we thought happened to make the dinosaurs extinct with a description of what happened and colored a picture of a dinosaur fossil complete with an attached narrative explaining how fossils are made. We read books by author Tommie de Paola.



E is for Experiments and we fell completely flat on this week!! We did 0 experiments all week. It was all we could do to get our reading, math, handwriting and poetry in. We did read books by author Lois Ehlert.



Too bad but hopefully we will be back on track this week for F week! F is for Flowers and Fire Safety!!

I will post again soon to share the other everyday school activities we do for math, reading, phonics, religion, and handwriting! I hope to get back to posting more regularly now that I am feeling better! We have really been enjoying ourselves!!

Katie

Felt Show Update

SO..The party was not a roaring success. Only 2 people made it and 1 will order and the other will host a catalog show. I am in the middle of my first catalog show right now so I am not sure how those turn out. I am sure that the parties are much more effective when you can see the felt in person and touch it and see that it is a much better quality than the other felt boards you can buy in the store. Plus I can explain all the reasons why Story Time Felts is so much better than other products!!!

I have a show tonight that I am expecting a better turn out from and I am picking up an order from a day care center tomorrow morning so hopefully this month will turn out alright after all!!!!

Katie

Story Time Felts

So this Saturday I am hosting a felt show at my house (I sell Story Time Felts) for my neighbors and some friends who have not been able to make a show yet. However so far only one person has given me an RSVP saying that she is coming. I am a little concerned but still hoping for the best.
I hosted a Pampered Chef show for my neighbors a couple of years ago and I dont think I got any RSVP's but 5 people came so I am just hoping the same thing will happen again. I was really counting on this show to help me to break out my circle of friends into people I don't know so that my business will grow. So I will just pray that the neighbors are in a neighborly mood tomorrow night at 8!! I will post the results soon!!

Swimming at a lake

The children and I went to visit a friend and her family who are camping at a nearby lake for the summer today. It was the perfect day for it as it was 95 degrees!! We needed to be near water today! Everyone had a GREAT time! There was a dock to jump from and both girls jumped many many times! Snow White was jumping by herself with her noodle by the end of our swimming time! I couldn't believe it...she had to go under water and everything. This was good practice for our vacation in a couple of weeks! Flower Picker was jumping to one are while Do-Do was in the other with her floaties on and loving every jump! We had to take a break now and then to let Do-Do get himself full of sand...although surprisingly enough he didn't eat any!! YAY

After swimming we went back to the camping trailer and the children played on the slip and slide while dinner was being cooked..hot dogs and hamburgers. We were planning to eat outside on the picnic table but it was right in the sun and even at 6pm it was still so hot that in less than 20 minutes and entire stick of butter melted into a puddle on the potato plate! Needless to say we took the picnic into the trailer and although it was crowded it worked!

All in all it was a really fun day had by all! I need to be better about bringing my camera along to capture the fun! It just never seems to enter my mind until we are at and event and I wish I had it!! I will be working on it!

I can feed myself..kind of!

A few days ago Do-Do began to show and interest in holding his own spoon and putting it in his mouth, so I began to put food on the spoon and hand it to him. He seemed to be doing a great job so I gave him the bowl as well.



He started out doing very well



He was multi-tasking too!!





It wasn't long before he decided that he wasn't getting enough food in that way!



And by the end he couldn't decide which choice to make!!

Hopefully this will be the beginning of him feeding him self independently as I am tired of feeding him and eating at the same time. Soon I will be able to enjoy a meal where I am only feeding myself!...maybe

Katie

4th of July

Last night the children and I went to a 4th of July picnic (Hubby was working 3-11 :( ). It didn't begin until 7pm (which is bed time at our house!) so I was a little concerned about how they would do being out so late. The hosting family lives way out in the country about 30min. from our house (which was one of the reasons I wanted to go despite the late start). It was so beautiful there. They own 80 acres and their driveway is 3/4 of a mile long. You have to have 4 wheel drive to make it up the driveway so we parked at the bottom and caught a ride up with another family! I felt like we were in an ocean of green..just grass and trees everywhere!

The country is a child's dream come true! Lots of room to run! They have a large garden, raspberry bushes ( the girls enjoyed hunting for raspberries!), a strawberry patch, a huge sand pit (we came home filthy!) and a big wooden swing set. Do-Do loved that he could wander about without restriction! The family also just had two litters of kittens born and Flower Picker couldn't get enough kitten! She was walking around with one under each arm for much of the night...needless to say the kittens had a long night!

We ate and played, then prayed the Rosary and had dessert and by that time it was almost 9:30 and the fireworks weren't scheduled to begin until 10pm. So we said our goodbyes and headed home. We didn't get home until 10:15 but Do-Do was asleep and the girls went right to bed with out any trouble. All that running and fresh air tired them out! Despite the fact that bed time was 3 hours late Snow White was up promptly at 6! Flower Picker was next at 7 and Do-Do "slept in" until 7:20!! We had a fabulous night lets hope we wont pay for it today!!

Felt Food

Our moms group recently got into making felt food. One of the moms pointed us in the direction of the blog Helping Little Hands. Polly has a tutorial for making every kind of food imaginable over there and I was inspired to do some for my children.

Now mind you we have about every food imaginable already for our kitchen set (consisting of a wooden stove which I built)and it almost never gets used! So my hope is by adding a few pieces that will fit into the small pots and pans that they have to play with maybe we can get some use out of it!!

So here are my creations so far:


Pancakes with syrup and butter, eggs, and cookies with frosting. If I had to do them over I think I would have stuffed the cookies with a little batting...they are a tad flat! But they will do!
My further plans include fajitas and tortellini....more items that can be made in a pan on the stove! We will see if they are a hit or not!

The Day's Activities!

Monday was the anniversary of Do-Do 's Baptism day so we celebrated with mini donuts after lunch!


Do-Do has an intolerance to wheat but just for experimentation we decided to let him have a bit of donut and he didn't seem to have a problem until the middle of the night. Well in all honesty since he hadn't shown signs of distress before dinner I gave him another bite after dinner since everyone else was enjoying them! At 10pm he awoke SCREAMING. I couldn't get him to stop for about 20 minutes. He was then awake for the next hour alternating between making a mess and fussing. I got him back to sleep just before midnight and at 5am the cycle repeated itself. So much for the wheat experiment. Needless we will not be repeating this for a LONG time.

In other news Flower Picker has been dying for a pair of flip flops since Snow White got a pair of hand me downs from our mail lady. She wears them all over the house! So today I saw a rack on the way out of the dollar store and picked her up a pair. They are at least 2 sizes too big but she hasn't taken them off since we got them home! The little things that make her happy!!!