Celebrate Advent with Christmas Picture Books

If you have young children, you probably do some sort of Advent activity to countdown the days until Christmas.  There are lots of creative ideas for doing this and also reinforcing the message and meaning of Christmas with our children.  For years I used the advent unit studies on the Symbols of Christmas and the Names of Jesus found in Celebrate With Joy! by Sondra Burnett/

We have created paper chains with Bible verses on them, tearing off one link per day.

We have collected change in a jar, counting objects in our house that are blessings, and then donating the money to the Southern Baptist's Lottie Moon Fund or another charity after Christmas.   For example,  on Dec. 1,  put a penny in the jar for every shoe in the house. On Dec. 2, put a quarter in the jar for each car we own.  On Dec. 3, put a dollar in the jar for each bathroom.  On Dec. 4, put a dime in the jar for each Bible in the house.  Etc.

We love books, and Arnold Ytreeide has written a wonderful series of Advent adventure stories set in biblical times.  The stories, Jotham's Journey, Bartholomew's Passage,  Tabitha's Travels , and Ishtar's Odyssey,  are written as daily readings leading up to Christmas Day, and include questions to talk about together.  Read a different one each year.

Another idea is to collect Christmas picture books and display them in a special basket, reading one story each day until Christmas.  Advent traditionally starts on the 4th Sunday before Christmas, but most Advent Calendars start on Dec. 1st.  You can do it either way.
Here are some suggestions for books you might like to add to your Christmas collection.

The Very First Christmas, by Paul L. Maier

The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey,  by Susan Wojciechowski

Jacob's Gift, by Max Lucado

 Alabaster's Song, by Max Lucado

How the Grinch Stole Christmas, by Dr. Seuss

Legend of the Christmas Tree, by Rick Osborne

Legend of the Candy Cane, by Lori Walburg

The Night Before Christmas, by Clement Clark Moore, ill. by Jan Brett

Gift of the Magi, by O Henry, ill. by P.J. Lynch

A Charlie Brown Christmas Pop-Up Edition

Christmas Around the World Pop-Up Book by Chuck Fischer

A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, ill. by Brett Helquist

Legend of the Poinsettia, by retold & ill. by Tomie de Paola

The Little Drummer Boy, by Ezra Jack Keats

St. Nicholas: The Real Story of the Christmas Legend, by Julie Stiegemeyer

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, by Barbara Robinson

Christmas in the Big Woods, by Laura Ingalls Wilder, ill. by Renee Graef

The Littlest Angel, by Charles Tazewell

Twelve Days of Christmas, ill. by Jan Brett

Silver Packages: An Appalachian Christmas Story, by Cynthia Rylant

Christmas in the Trenches, by John McCutcheon

The Candle in the Window, by Grace Johnson

Annika's Secret Wish, by Beverly Lewis

Gift of the Christmas Cookie: Sharing the True Meaning of Jesus' Birth, by Dandi Daley Mackall

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

My teen son said something this morning that troubled me.  When I mentioned that his Spanish class wasn't meeting today in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, he said, "But nobody in that class is black."

I don't know where that perception came from.  I don't make a big deal out of every holiday, but we do acknowledge most holidays even as we go about our normal routines, and try to learn something about their origins, purpose, etc. The idea that MLKJr. Day  is only for black people didn't come from me.  But I will make darn sure that we talk about it today.

Here are a few resources that you can use in your homeschool,  or just to learn for learning's sake.

short biography of MLKJr.
http://afroamhistory.about.com/od/biographies/a/A-Biography-Of-Martin-Luther-King-Jr.htm

Videos on History.com 

http://www.history.com/topics/martin-luther-king-jr/videos#history-of-the-holidays-martin-luther-king-jr-day

Printable activities for elementary & middle school students
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/history/us/MLK/

free printable Unit Study
http://www.thehomeschoolmom.com/schoolroom/unit_studies/martinlutherkingjr_unit_study.php#sthash.muhT0wKS.dpbs

Numerous links from Easy Fun School
http://www.easyfunschool.com/Martin-Luther-King-Jr.html

Martin Luther King Jr. Lapbook
http://heartofwisdom.com/images/MartinLutherKingJrlapbook.pdf

Famous MLKJr. quotes:  cursive copywork pages
http://homegrownlearners.squarespace.com/storage/MartinLutherKingJrcopywork.pdf

Martin Luther King Jr. quotes
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/martin_luther_king_jr.html

"I Have a Dream" speech
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smEqnnklfYs
http://www.montgomerycollege.edu/Departments/hpolscrv/mendes1.html
http://www.amazon.com/I-Have-Dream-Book-CD/dp/0375858873/ref=pd_sim_b_18

Back From Hiatus

I have taken a bit of a hiatus from my blog this fall. I can't say that I've been busier than ever; just a different kind of busy. I have one child that I'm still homeschooling and we've both been adjusting to a high school schedule with more outside classes and more expectations. My recent college graduate has a good job as a computer IT guy with Glass House and is living at home for the time being, along with one of his friends who has been calling our house home for the past several months. The house isn't as empty as I thought it would be when both daughters left in August, one for a new job with Samaritan's Purse in Boone and the other to start college at ECU.  The boys do appreciate my homecooking, so I am spending more time on meals and keeping food in the house. And the girls do make an appearance every once in a while, sometimes bringing friends home with them. It's funny; I once really wanted to pursue adoption but it became evident that our family was not called to that.  But now I feel like surrogate mom to a whole bunch of young adults, which I really love. Just a different kind of season.

Anyway, I put the blog aside for a brief time, partly because I still struggle with what this is - a diary, an encouragement to homeschoolers, a family scrapbook.  I am drawn back to it though, because right now it is still all those things. I like looking back through the record of our family activities, I like to have a place to brain-dump occasionally about whatever is going on around me, and I pretty regularly get comments about my homeschooling posts and the encouragement that they bring.   So I guess I should carry on as is for now.


Back to my Thanksgiving preparations.  My two oldest arrive tomorrow and all 7 of us will be here for Thanksgiving weekend. Hallelujah!  I have a couple of cupcake orders for tomorrow, and I have pies, dinner rolls, casseroles, dips, stuffing, etc to prepare, as well as some more cleaning to do. GAH!  I love it.

Blessings,

 

Welcome 2012!

We rang in 2012 at the annual New Years Eve festivities at our friends, the Nemitzes.
The parents played Family Feud and Catch Phrase while the kids played games upstairs - then we all gathered in the living room and kitchen for the big Countdown! 

Everyone toasted with New Year with sparkling grape juice - even the Campbells, who joined us via Skype from Vancouver, BC!

 

The kids finished off the night with sparklers out on the lawn.  

Good night everyone!  I wish you all extraordinary blessings in 2012.

Gifts of the Wise Men - A Way to Give Meaningfully at Christmas

Christmas 1987.  It was the first Christmas in our new house. Alex was 2 and a half, Sarah was a newborn, having arrived just 24 days earlier.  We were living in Florida, and decided not to make the trip to Massachusetts where our families were, but to celebrate at home.  These were the only grandchildren in my family, so boxes of wrapped gifts arrived from my parents, brothers and sister, as well as Mark's family.  Since Alex had now grown into the "fun" stage, Mark and I  loaded up more than one cart at Toys R Us, and on Christmas morning the gifts spread out from under the tree, taking up half the room.

I kid you not.

For two children, one of whom was less than 1 month old.

Silly child. He kept wanting to stop and play with each toy he unwrapped. Overcome with the holiday spirit, we urged him to keep unwrapping!  There were more toys to discover!  What did Grammy & Grampa send?  Look at this! Finally, he literally begged to stop, and we allowed him to play for a while and resume unwrapping after lunch.

It was the Christmas of extreme excess.  To be fair, we were just so excited to be parents and wanted our children to have lots of wonderful opportunities to grow and learn and explore and use their imaginations!  The gifts included a Little Tykes kitchen, a tricycle, a red wagon, a child's basketball hoop!  We probably could have/should have spread those acquisitions out through the year, but there is just something so magical about Christmas morning!  But we realized that we probably weren't setting a good precedent, and Christmas morning  became a bit more sane in the following years.  However, I still struggled sometimes with setting a limit and making our gift giving meaningful.    Why do we give gifts at Christmas?  How do we instill an attitude of giving and gratitude in our children and not of greed and selfishness?

Well, my kids are mostly grown, but we still all love the Christmas holiday and opening gifts on Christmas morning is a wonderful part of the celebration of the birth of our Saviour, the ultimate gift to all mankind.  Last year I read about and implemented a new tradition related to gift giving that I really liked, and plan to do again this year.  It is giving the Gifts of the Wise Men.   We don't give actual gold, frankincense, and myrrh,  but rather gifts that symbolize those 3 gifts to the Christ child.  Each person in the family received a Gold gift, a Frankincense gift, and a Myrrh gift.
GOLD =  something valuable, something greatly desired.  The big gift.  An ipod, or bike, or video game system or jewelry. 
FRANKINCENSE = an aromatic spice/incense used in the temple;  so a spiritual gift. A bible or Christian book or DVD, praise music, Christian message tshirt or jewelry, etc.
MYRRH =  a resin, used to prepare a body for burial;  rather strange, but an important and practical thing to have ready.  So a practical gift, particularly something for the body.  Clothes. Snow boots.  Perfume. Hair bows. 

This covered the bases.  I had wrapped each type of gift ( g, f, or m ) in different colored paper, so on Christmas morning I had the gifts separated into piles and explained what we were doing. Everyone appreciated it, understood it. There were other gifts as well -  a family board game, DVDs, gifts between siblings.  But it brought new meaning to the opening of the Christmas gifts.  I think that makes it a keeper and a new family tradition.


Merry Christmas !

End of Year Crunch

Life is a whirlwind around here right now.  Not only is it the end of the school year, but it is the end of the school year with a SENIOR!  whew!

We just spent Easter weekend in Boone. Sarah and Eric both had to stay on campus due to work duties, so we packed up all the Easter baskets and fixin's for Easter dinner and headed for the hills - literally. Friday night we had dinner at Woodlands BBQ in Blowing Rock. Saturday we drove along the Blue Ridge Parkway to a spot they knew for a short hike up to a scenic lookout.  Unfortunately, my knee couldn't handle anything more than a short hike, and I needed some help up and down the trail even at that. Darn worn out knee.  The knee didn't stop me from showing my kids I can still swing a plastic bat and be competitive in Home Run Derby though, and Mom tied for 2nd place.  I cooked dinner in Sarah's apartment on Sat. night, and then fell asleep on the couch watching "Voyage of the Dawn Treader".   I couldn't really hide the Easter baskets this year, since we were in a small apartment, so they were placed on the coffee table - but Jason felt gypped....sorry, buddy.   We worshipped our risen Saviour at Alliance Bible Fellowship, and then enjoyed a dinner of baked ham, Grandma's pineapple sauce, roasted potatoes, whole green beans, rolls, and strawberry shortcake. 

Carolina Capital Homeschool Prom is less than 2 weeks away now!  We have 131 registrations in, with quite a few still expected to arrive this week. Wristbands, candles, and candleholders have been ordered. We met with the caterer last week and decided on the menu for the buffet. The final confirmation emails are going out. Chaperones are lined up.  There are a whole lot of little details to still take care of over the next. If you would, please pray for good weather on May 6.

Our homeschool group has a graduation ceremony each year, and this June we have the largest number of seniors ever!  Thirty students will receive diplomas and congratulations from their parents in a lovely, personalized ceremony on June 4.  I've been helping the Graduation Committee with the plans this year, and am printing the diplomas for the ceremony.  Amanda, my 4th child and baby girl, is graduating this year.  I'll be homeschooling just one child for the next 5 years, until my baby boy finishes high school. Oh my.

Baseball season has arrived - J is playing little league  and also still doing a weekly  private coaching session for basketball.  He continues to love sports and excels in both of these. His favorite sport is basketball during basketball season,  and baseball during baseball season.

Last weekend, Mark and I flew to MA to attend the wedding of his nephew. It was a nice get-away! We haven't seen a good bit of his family in 8 years, since his dad's funeral, so it was a reunion as well.  Sitting around the table with Mark's brothers and sister, we marveled at the longevity of our marriages -  33 years, 29 years, 29 years, 24 years -  and commented that we hoped ( or prayed, in my case) that the bride and groom would carry on that legacy, rather than that of the bride's family, with its multiple broken marriages and relationships, evident even at this happy occasion.

Our cupcake fundraiser has gone extremely well. Amanda has almost reached her goal for the Uganda missions trip.  Since response has been so great, and my friends don't seem to be sick of cupcakes yet, I think I'll continue baking for a while longer, and contribute as much as I can towards Sarah's support for her internship with Safe World Nexus next year. 

I am passing along the reins of support group presidency with Lighthouse at the end of June, and am looking forward to a period of less responsibility in the group, although I do plan to stay active and support the new leaders. :-)  But I feel like I have neglected my house, my husband, our homeschool, and my relationship with the Lord, not giving them the attention they need, due to my other commitments recently.  I hope to rectify that situation.


There is some major cleaning that has to take place here before graduation.  Family is coming to visit, and we'll be having an Open House for friends after the ceremony.  Better go get started on that. 

Savor the moments.

Lots of Pictures

Well, to follow that rambling bit of blog insanity, here are some pictures of the past month.

Lighthouse Gingerbread House Contest

J's Lighthouse - #7

Christmas morning at Grandma's

 

 

Christmas Eve

 

family Christmas Eve party at Victoria Station Cafe

 cousins reunited

New Year's Eve  - sparkling grape juice