Day 7 of Advent is here… and since it has been a WEEK of houses and crafts and things I figured I would share out little villages. 3 are garland style wall decorations and the 4th a standing village. They are so proud of each and every house and I am loving seeing their colouring styles and themes (Trinity is PINK PINK PINK) adapt and grow. Today was a Post Office – a must for any village!!

Gavin's

Trinity's

Zander's

Emanuel's

Emanuel’s handcrafted gift is officially completed… it is a matched set actually – a feltie ornament AND squeezable toy both of the subject of his choosing – an elephant! 

He knows about the ornament (it is now on the tree), but NOT the bigger version!

Today’s Advent related craft was a slightly messy one with painting first…

Green sparkly paint

We had to alter the design slightly as we did not have corks to make the stands and instead make ours HANGING picture frames (oh and everyone added some glitter to their paint of course!). 

We have had quite a few time outs to calm down over things… When we have a situation where all the kids are to do one thing and one of them pipes up that it is boring or they don’t want to (craft or not) it often spreads to the others and makes everything not fun so instead of dealing with it at the table I have been sending the boys responsible (amazingly enough the twins only today) to their room and letting them settle there. Hopefully this will work! 

Family time today was a trip to Dollarama to spend this week’s allowance! We ended up with two KinderSurprise eggs (1.00 at the store!!), a bag of chocolate covered pretzels and a Hello Kitty tin (ok that was 2.00 but she is 3… and not really getting it yet). A few more necessities to completing gifts were bought as well as some snacks… but wow was it cold, and as always a bit of an ordeal to get ALL 5 kids out the door… but worth it!

Hello Kitty at a steal

I made up a Dollarama version of this Candy Cane Vase. I used a glass instead of a full vase and the 1.00 boxes of candy canes coupled with ribbon I already had in the house. So my candy canes were not 100% uniform but the end result, I think, was rather nice. Next year I may try this with a bigger vase AND higher quality candy canes!

My Candy Cane Vase

Today’s video is a craft that was included on our daily Advent Calendar page that we have not tried. Looks really neat though!  

We are finishing our craft from today tomorrow as glue and paint needed to dry and tomorrow’s craft is one we are not interested in! Speaking of completed crafts… Gavin has decided to gift his very first cross stitch (though not an original design… I designed this one, his first finish though!) so we had to purchase a frame to finish it off completely. It just works doesn’t it?

Ready to gift

And now I get back to work on another last Christmas present! The kids are almost done!! But the list is still rather long… 

In which popcorn baby does minor yoga moves while munching

I have decided to start a new little mini Christmas/Advent tradition. We printed out this page from our day 3 on our Advent Calendar. This year I had them tell me things they like about Christmas and I wrote them down. It will be interesting to compare future year’s answers. 

Things I Like About Christmas

Polar Express is getting along nicely. Though there were grumblings about writing words (gasp) and doing a word search (which in hindsight I was told was VERY easy)… I am hoping we can continue the last few parts and have a lovely lapbook for them to remember part of our year 2 homeschooling. 

Today’s craft for Advent was to make an origami box. Ken and I made one up out of red and green cardstock last night and had the 3 boys work TOGETHER to decorate it! I am planning to make a few more tonight so they can decorate some more, maybe put some of their ornaments in them to gift out! 

Our pretty box

Our filler time craft before sledding came from Education.com… Santa and his elves (we made two). I printed them on regular printer paper and had the 3 boys colour and cut them out themselves. You can find Santa HERE and the elf HERE.

Santa and two of his elves

Sledding with Daddy was another success today. Due to work he took them around dusk where they tried a new hill and played with other kids. They were out nearly an hour and came back with rosy cheeks and empty tummies!

Sledding at dusk

We had a busy evening. Ken and Fydo wanted to talk shop and with He Chris around Echo and I were able to join them and Kristen. I also had a few items to wrap and she has the wrapping paper in abundance! Of course this occurred during the supper hour so we decided to go to the nearest restaurant to their home – the Indian place! Ken’s first time, note his carefully separated food! 

Ken's careful plate

We wrapped the odd shaped stuff, chatted and enjoyed some adult only time while the boys talked about gaming and programming some and Ken snuck in a 10 min nap (they DO have a comfy sitting room).

Me and my baby

Played out

Emanuel and Trinity got spoiled with some special Aunty Karyn time – not only did they do jammie library time but they ALSO went by her apartment and got to see her kitty… by see I am told that they refused to actually go in and engaged in a staring match with said kitty! But in the end he was deemed to be a nice kitty so it is all good! 

I got home too late to talk to any of the children about their evening but I hear it went well! Now I just have to get to work on Emanuel’s handcrafted gift for the year – a feltie Elephant ornament that I am then going to blow up to a bigger size to make something more squeezable… with that I am done his list! YAY! I have to share today’s Advent video… Trinity had to watch it over and over and over again! 

And each time she watched it she had to tell me HER interpretation on events!!

Now to enjoy crafting while watching anime… oh and take a peek at the start of what Fydo and Ken have declared my “underwear fund”… Night

Quite the "fund" hey?

Mondays always seem to be a bit of a struggle. I think we need to walk away from having weekends so obviously different  from our weekdays. We have had to face printing practice for Zander today. It was one of the things the facilitator noted… a backslide in the legibility. He is resistant (of course) but we are making progress. I limited our workbook time to a page of math and a page of either printing practice or sight book work. Amazing how even that little bit was a bit of a struggle. HOWEVER we did make it a little more fun with CHRISTMAS stickers from the Dollarama to mark completed pages in the math books. 

Sight word book work

We finished our Day 4craft today – toilet roll Christmas candles! Super simple and lots of fun, though we did have some paint drips and some stickers that did NOT like the paint surface. Gavin put some of our glitter stuff in his paint to give it a shiny look and they all were happy with the end result. I am so glad I picked up some shiny Christmas pipecleaners with Kristen. They just look so nice! Up on the mantel they go! 

Our completed candles

Today’s theme was the Christmas robin… we did the colour by numbers, the connect the dashes… but we decided not to make ourselves some robins out of paperplates. Instead we read some fun stories about sleds and Christmas. Did you know that Fancy Nancy is full of interesting Christmas knowledge? 

Fancy Nancy

Sledding

Storytime for Petite Sheepette

I wanted to remind everyone that we have moved… and our mail is NOT being forwarded… I cannot remember who usually sends out cards but if you contact me I can get you our new address!! Please do NOT send mail to the old address! 

One of today’s videos is a step by step walk through on how to draw a Christmas robin. Gavin took inspiration from the process (pencil first, then pen over lines, erase and we added colour) to make his own picture. Christmas themed of course! 

Gavin's completed drawing

Zander is becoming quite the checkers player. We had a game this afternoon and ended on a draw (we each had one king left). I only had to remind him once or twice that it is a VERY boring game if you just keep moving back and forth to avoid doing anything. I need to find someone who is good at chess to teach him chess next I think… who knows, this could be his “thing”!!

Checkers

So the kids were supposed to go sledding with Ken today and work interfered. With good reason, he stuck close to home to answer the phone and work out the details of a possible contract… but that means tomorrow is THE day – sledding after lunch! I think I am almost looking forward to it more than they are! 

The laminator and my cluttered table had a run in, luckily no jam but a slightly bent puzzle piece and house… thankfully owner of said house was fine with it and I think the puzzle will still work… but I need to have words with that machine. It is NOT playing nice! 

We have a busy day tomorrow with the proposed sledding, Trinity and Emanuel’s library adventure solo with Karyn and Ken, Echo and myself meeting up with Kristen and Fydo. Thankfully He Chris will be here to help with the other two. Our villages are growing, as is the boys’ Polar Express lapbooks. I still have the rest of the week to complete my goals and I plan on taking advantage of ALL of my spare time! And some of my not so spare as well! 

Her top says Silent Night... I don't think so!

My kiddos