It's snow crazy!

Snow started late Christmas night and continued all day Sunday, making for a snow crazy day!!!

 

SNOW MUCH FUN! :)

Third week of Advent down, one left to go!

Here is a recap of our Third Week of Advent!

Santa Lucia Day!  (Sweet rolls, dress up, crown craft, St. Lucy re-enactment, coloring/tracing page)
Traceables:  Joseph, Jesus, Shepherds, Bethlehem, star, joy

Bows:  Ordering smallest to largest (this was way too easy for her)

Fine motor skills:  Stringing stars onto sparkly pipe cleaners (very pleasing to her, in fact she asked for more stars!)

Baking not one, but 2 batches of gingerbread cookies!

Present wrapping (real presents and some fake ones...she was just really into wrapping and may turn out to be a better wrapper than me!)
Who Am I?  Lesson on Joseph, Jesus' Father on Earth
Christmas presents geometric pattern blocks

Christmas Playdough Tree
Placing the stamps on our outgoing Christmas cards!  (I was slightly worried about turning this "job" over to her, really because I wanted it to look just right, but she placed the stamp in the correct corner and right-side-up EVERY time, and was so proud of the job she had done when she completed them all!  It was all worth it to have a few "crooked" stamps.
New rice-filled Christmas sensory tub

Bell box:  ringing different types of bells and listening to their different sounds.
Nativity silhouette craft!

Playdough Christmas Tree

I made some homemade playdough (1 cup flour, 1/4 cup salt and water; mix together, no cooking necessary).  We added green food coloring (Christmas tree color of course) and wallah!  Note:  This no-cook recipe results in a slightly "grainier" dough.

So I turned her loose with the playdough and a box of "ornaments":  beads of various color, size and shape, some bendaroos, sparkly silver pipe cleaners cut into small pieces, sequins, etc.

She worked for over an hour on this!  I couldn't believe how into it she was.  And the most precious thing is that while she was decorating her tree, she told me it was an "offering to baby Jesus".......priceless (!) and melts my heart!  She then proceeded to ask for some "real" playdough and made presents with tissue paper "bows" to put under the tree.

Wow...I was impressed!  Thanks to Counting Coconuts for the clever idea!

Feast of Saint Lucy or Santa Lucia Day!

We woke up this morning and nothing seemed to go quite as I had planned.  But....we made it work and in the end it turned out beautifully!!

Today was the Feast of Saint Lucy, also known as Santa Lucia Day.  This was the first year that we celebrated this feast, and Iz just loved it.  We started out by making a braided wreath out of cinnamon rolls (idea from Catholic Icing) and Isabel thought that was exceptionally cool!  But we had to wait to light the candles and eat them because Daddy (whom she was going to serve) was up early and on a conference call with work.

While we were waiting, we began to make a Santa Lucia wreath/crown with candles (I used green scrapbooking paper since it was a little heavier than construction paper, white foam for the candlesticks and yellow construction paper for the flame).  I explained that St. Lucy cared for the poor and brought them food and drink in the middle of the night (her hands are full of a tray of food, thus the need for the lighted wreath crown).

By this point, Isabel had still not seen a picture of St. Lucy, so she asked what she wore.  I told her and she (on her own!) initiated a "I want to dress up as Santa Lucia" moment!  I fumbled because I had been searching everywhere for a white dress just for this day, and did not find one in my budget....Isabel suggested she wear her white "angel" dress up dancer's dress....so, we made it work!  A white turtleneck, white leggings, the white angel dress up dress, pink dress up shoes (her idea) and a red scarf.  I put her hair into braided umm....hoops?  And then did not expect the following... "Mommy, it's your turn to dress up now!" (as she led me into my closet).

Now this was hiding in my closet:

So she peeks in and finds red shoes for me and then sees the doll sitting on the floor.  Looks at me, looks back at the doll, looks back at me (expressionless)...."What is it?" I ask.  "Oh it's St. Lucy," she replies, and then looks back at me and grins.  "It's for you!"  I tell her and she just scoops her up and can't believe it.

The background is that I found "St. Lucy" at Goodwill for $2.99 wearing that white(ish) dress and red shoes.  I took her home, cleaned her up, washed her clothes (can't believe they didn't fall apart) and put a red ribbon around her waist, braided her hair and put it into the loops, and made a wreath out of Christmas garland and birthday candles.  I have to say that I was absolutely giddy with excitement when I found her at Goodwill!  The Santa Lucia (retired) Kirsten American Girl doll (all dressed up) would have cost at least $100 for the doll and outfit, and that was off Ebay (and of course I would have never paid that)!

So we find a white shirt and skirt for me to wear...I put my hair into braided loops as well, and slip on my red shoes when the doorbell rings.  Oh yeah, like I'm going to go answer the door dressed up as a Swedish saint with a red scarf tied around my pregnant belly!  No way!  So I drag Robert off his conference call and he takes care of the door. 

In the meantime, Isabel and I decide to "play" St. Lucy and line up her stuffed animals as the poor people to whom St. Lucy brings food and drinks...she gets out the tea set and sets it all up!  It was quite precious.

Finally Rob is done and we get to have the St. Lucy wreath bread (yum!  I was starved by that time)!  And my Santa Lucia coloring sheet finishes the morning off!

Feast of the Immaculate Conception and crafts!

Wednesday, December 8th was the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.  We celebrated this by going to Mass at 9am.  I managed to pick the only seat which caused us to have to climb over an 800 year old, confused little lady.  Her caretaker was so flustered that we decided to do this that she just moved down and we ended up sitting between the old lady and her caretaker....awkward.  10 minutes later I was even more flustered when Rob showed up and squeezed into the pew with us!! LOL!  (I thought a work meeting was going to conflict with his attending Mass).

So when we got home we did a really cool coloring page that Lacy at Catholic Icing created. 

 

I was so impressed because Isabel put real thought into the colors she chose.  It used to be that she would choose every color in the coloring box, or color things indiscriminately...but in this picture she chose the true colors for some things!  Like brown for the tree trunk, red for the apples, etc.  And do you see the rainbow colors for "Immaculate Conception"?  It turned out really pretty. 

Anyway, I explained the symbolism for the picture so that she could try to understand what the Immaculate Conception is...and I explained it according to CatholicIcing's quote:  

"Symbolism in this picture includes Mary in the womb of St. Anne (wearing her signature veil). St. Anne and Mary both have their backs turned towards the apple tree to visually state that Mary was conceived without original sin. There are 3 beams of light coming down from the sun that stand for the trinity. Also, the snake (Satan) is unhappy about what has happened here."

So today Isabel thoughtfully asks me "Mommy, I have a mystery:  How can Jesus give the light to Mary before he was born?"  (Referring to the bold part of the above symbolic description).

Oh boy....good thing God is God and He can do all things!  I think it was too difficult to understand that God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit have always been around....even before Jesus was born on earth!  (It's alot for adults to understand too!)  But I loved knowing that she was still thinking about these things and having some insight into it all too!

Today we did a couple of crafts.  Christmas tree Christmas cards made simply from various lengths of scrapbooking paper...and a sticker star at the top.  I cannot take credit for this idea, I found it on the internet, but have no idea where I saw it!

Isabel made several of these....they were just too fun to make...you can see the ones in the background!

Finally we finished up with an angel craft that I made up!  YES, on my very own!  :)  Iz decided we had to add glitter to their wings.  Very simple to make, but I did use a glue gun to really set the wings on the body.

White felt, a paper doily, 2 white stickers (got these in a dollar store Christmas sticker bag; they are supposed to be ornaments) one popsicle stick, one gold or silver thread to hang it and one sparkly pipe cleaner!  It's just that easy!  Isabel loved drawing on the face, just make sure not to use a sharpie or it bleeds too much.

Saint Nicholas Day!

This is the first year that we have officially celebrated the Feast of St. Nicholas, Bishop of Myra.  Although Isabel's preschool class did celebrate last year. 

What prompted me to celebrate it this year was a conversation Iz and I had in the car the other day.  She was trying to ask/tell me about how Santa comes early, before Christmas and sadly, I was only half-listening.  But later I remembered her saying something about her shoes and then it finally clicked in my head!  She was trying to tell me about Saint Nicholas from whom modern day Santa Claus originated.  

Saint Nicholas leaves golden coin chocolates in children's shoes on the night of December 5th, so that when children wake up on December 6th, his feast day, there is the special gift.

Once I realized that she had been trying to explain what she could remember about St. Nicholas, I felt awful that I had disregarded her comments!!  The next morning I apologized to her for not listening well and not understanding and explained that she was right about St. Nicholas coming before Christmas.

She chose shoes to put out on the stairs last night and this morning she was very excited to check to see if St. Nicholas had been here.

So, Saint Nicholas left some silver coins in her shoes as well......can't really explain that one.  And the St. Nicholas candy (that you see with the bishop's staff and miter) was a HUGE hit.  That idea came from The Saint Nicholas Center as did the Saint Nicholas holy cards we made today (printable cards available here) .

So much fun and what a great way to teach her about one of God's saints!!  Here is one more picture of her working on a Saint Nicholas tracing and coloring worksheet that I made.

What's on the shelf?

I am so excited to have a new shelving unit in our "school room" (you can see a little of it in a picture below)!  This has allowed me to really open up the room, and utilize the shelves that are at Isabel's height for materials for her. 

Because I'm so behind on Letter of the Week posts, I'm skipping W and X posts for now while we focus on Advent and Christmas.  All of our school work this month is tailored to this season, so we will finish up Y and Z at the beginning of the year.

Here is a quick peek at what is on the shelf this week:

 Sensory Tub (below)

(Above)  Estimating candies in a jar.  Iz's guess was 16 and she counted out the entire 80 candies!  (With a little help at each decade).