Gearing up for Christmas

I am so excited this year about the Christmas season. I love the smells, the sounds (Christmas music) and just the excitement of it all. I really want to focus on the reason for the season with the girls this year. I have a lot of fun stuff planned such as crafts and outings but while we are doing these things I am looking forward to talking to the girls about Jesus and his birth. Recently I ordered this cute book I saw at the bookstore and I am looking forward to reading it to the girls each night.

Here is the description of the book from Amazon:Benjamin Bear is impatient for Christmas to come. To help the time pass quickly Mother Bear tells Benjamin that everyday he opens up a door on his advent calendar she will tell him a story. 24 stories in all about another bear and his long, arduous journey to Bethlehem. Little bear, lead by a glorious star, meets others on his journey. His journey filled with acts of heroism, kindness and small miracles show him the path to the Christ child. By the journey's end Benjamin Bear will understand and celebrate the true meaning of Christmas.

Thanks and Giving

OK this will be my last Thanksgiving post. I promise! I think:) This year we decide to do a thankful tree and giving boxes. I cut out a tree from poster board and leaves from construction paper and after dinner we would all say what we were thankful for. I would write it on the leaves and let the girls stick them on the tree. I also made 9 little boxes and put something we could do for someone else in them. I had planned on making them really cute with stickers and such but that never happened!!I wasn't sure Ellie would love this idea because a few of them were not so fun like do a chore for someone because you love them. She was just as excited about the giving boxes as she has been about the advent calendar at Christmas. Every morning during breakfast she talks about what might be in it and how she can't wait to see. She has done everything in them with excitement!

Here are a few of the things they are thankful for:

Ellie: holidays, the world and family

Emily: the letter "e", butterflies and Julie :)

Here were some of the giving boxes ideas:

Call someone and tell them you love them

Make a card for someone

Do a chore for someone

Donate something

Shop for someone in need (we went and shopped for our Salvation Army stockings)

Cook a meal for someone

and that is all I can remember at the moment

I am pretty sure we will do this again next year since it was such a hit!

Muffin Tin Monday

I have been wanting to participate in Muffin Tin Monday but always seem to forget. Luckily I remembered yesterday and was excited to see the theme was Thanksgiving. We did decorate your own turkey. I took bagels and tried to make brown cream cheese but it turned out grey. The girls didn't seem to notice though. We used apples, carrots, broccoli, bananas, cheese and cucumbers.

Turkey Craft

I recently ordered some liquid water color from Discount School Supply and I couldn't wait to use it! We decided to make coffee filter turkeys and they turned out so cute. I just let the girls use droppers to put the paint on the filters and while those were drying we traced their footprint on construction paper, cut them out and added eyes, wattle, beak and feet. After the coffee filter was dry we glued their feet on the filters. Simple but fun!

Turkey Cookies

I saw these turkey cookies and knew that we had make them. The best part was that I made one to show Ellie how to do it and she was able to make the rest of them all by herself and I was able to help Emily. They turned out so cute!!!

Thanksgiving Activities

I finally made some Thanksgiving/Fall activities for the girls. I hope they enjoy them as much as I enjoy making them. Yes, I am fully aware that I am a dork! I made this felt turkey for the girls to practice with buttons. They have to button the feathers onto the turkey. I copied the idea from My Montessori Journey. I also made this felt scarecrow dice game. The first person to fully dress the scarecrow wins. I saw the idea on this awesome blog Let's Explore. She used a spinner but I decided to use dice. I also numbered some leaves that we have so Ellie could put them in order. The last thing I have is another dress the scarecrow activity. I printed this one from Kidssoup.com. I made something similar to this last year with a snowman and Ellie loved it so hopefully she will love this to.

Thanksgiving Books

I thought I would share some of our favorite books we are reading for Thanksgiving.

My New Obsession

I am trying to get Christmas presents made and on my to do list is peg people. I started making some a few weeks ago and now I can't stop. It is very addictive:) I can't get a good picture of them unfortunately but this will give you an idea what they look like.

I also made a really cute pirate one that I like but every picture of it looks like a big blur! I have made like 16 so far. Somebody stop me!!!!!

Getting organized

I don't have a lot of storage for our homeschool supplies except my homeschool shelf, which I love, but I need more! We have a closet in our bonus room/classroom but it is very small and there were no shelves until my very handy husband recently added some for me:) He took apart an old shipping pallet so the wood was free and if anybody knows me they know I love free!!!! I know this picture isn't very good but I organized the shelves and then painted the edge with chalkboard paint so I could write what is on the shelf. I tend to re-organize a lot so it will be nice just to erase and rewrite what is on the shelf. Getting shelves motivated me to organize some of my materials too. I had quite a few felt stories laying around so I stapled the stories into file folders and then attached the felt pieces on the back.

The last thing that I did was organize my file folder holder (wow, I made a rhyme:) ). I had a ton of loose activities in it and I categorized them into season, holiday, file folder games, felt stories etc. so I can quickly find everything.

Carving Pumpkins and Trick or Treating

Thought I would share some pictures of our pumpkin carving and trick or treating. For Halloween Ellie was a cupcake and Emily was a baker. We had so much fun!