We have always based a lot of our curriculum around the seasons and holidays and Christmas has always been a month long unit for our family. This year I took a bit of a different approach. While the little ones still did the group binder with its worksheets, drawings and colouring pages the twins were in charge of their OWN notebook. Surprisingly enough, with some whining and complaining we still managed a project that we ALL feel proud of. Lots of independent mini reports were written up and even ideas of things to paste in their books on their own were brought forth!

Of course I have a long list of resources and I am going to share them for my benefit as well as others… Movies first!

• the Muppet Christmas Carol, I found a great worksheet set thanks to IPA Productions that deals with the original story for the twins that tied in nicely with the movie. We used the movie as an accessible medium to introduce the story and then they read the condensed version in these worksheets HERE. There is a cute colouring page for the movie HERE from Coloring Wallpapers.
• Veggie Tales – Saint Nicholas, A Story of Joyful Giving
• Veggie Tales – It’s a Meaningful Life
• Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Books! (sorry no links… but hopefully with name and author you can stumble upon them… this post is simply too late as is!)

• The Legend of Saint Nicholas by Demi. This was a great introduction the origins of Santa without ruining the magic for anyone as the book ends with the tradition being continued on after Saint Nicholas’ passing by a boy in the village who was chosen to continue his work.
• Christmas by Trudi Strain Trueit
• Christmas Around the World by Emily Kelley. We love this book, each of the twins chose THREE countries and summarized the traditions they have into on brief paragraph that I spell checked and then they copied into their notebooks.
• Christmas by Natalie M. Rosinsky
• O Christmas Tree by Jacqueline Farmer
• Christmas by Alice K. Flanagan
• Celebrate Christmas by Deborah Heiligman
• A Short History of Christmas by Sally Lee
• Merry Christmas Everywhere! by Arlene Erlbach and Herb Erlbach
• Twelve Days of Christmas in Minnesota by Constance Van Hoven
• Christmas Traditions Around the World by Ann Ingalls
• Christmas Trolls by Jan Brett… this was a random mid unit find at the library. The art is AMAZING!
• How the Grinch Stole Christmas! by Dr. Seuss
• The Legend of the Candy Cane by Lori Walburg
• What Star is This? by Joseph Slate
• City of Snow, The Great Blizzard of 1888 by Linda Oatman High
• The Berenstain Bears Meet Santa Bear by Stan and Jan Berenstain
• A Child Was Born by Grace Maccarone
• The Heron Christmas Carol by Frances Tyrrell
• My Penguin Osbert by Elizabeth Cody Kimmel
• What is Christmas? by Michelle Medlock Adams
• The Christmas Story by Jane Werner
• A Very Shiny Christmas by Debbie Guy-Christiansen
• A Pussycat’s Christmas by Margaret Wise Brown
• Santa’s Snow Cat by Sue Stainton
• Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer by Barbara Shook Hazen
• Santa is Coming to Texas by Steve Smallman
• A Porcupine in a Pine Tree by Helaine Becker
• Christmas Is… by Gail Gibbon
• A Kenyan Christmas by Tony Johnston
• The Nutcracker by Bethany Snyder
• The Gingerbread Man by Dawn Bentley
• Recordable storybooks read by Gammie – Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and The Night Before Christmas
• And a lovely British book mailed by a friend of Favourite Christmas Stories from Brown Watson publishers

Hanukkah, while not the most important Jewish holiday IS the one closest to Christmas and the best known generally so we did cover it briefly. Here are our books.

• Hanukkah by Rebecca Pettiford
• Hanukkah Around the World by Tami Lehman-Wilzig
• Hanukkah by Lisa M. Herrington
• Chanukah Lights Everywhere by Michael J. Rosen

You can find some terrific printables on Teacher Vision HERE and a Hanukkah mini book thanks to Family Education HERE.

Of course we covered Polar Express, both the book and the movie. The little ones did parts of a lapbook I had purchased years previous but we supplemented with worksheets… pages from a party kit by Houghton Mifflin Books HERE, Scholastic.com had some resources HERE, and activities and lessons by Busy Teachers Cafe HERE.

• The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg

We covered a lovely range of topics from symbols to world traditions and including Santa Claus and reindeer. A supplementary fact page about reindeer HERE thanks to Kids Play and Create. I also have some resources I have acquired from Currclick:

• The History of Candy Canes HERE. We also watched how candy canes were made on The Kid Should See This HERE
• Christmas Symbols Lapbook HERE

Want a little info about Boxing Day? We got ours from Ducksters HERE.

I hope these links are helpful… late as they are posted!! 

December 26-30

Otherwise known as the Boxing Day that wasn’t. Here in Minnesota it was life as usual. Well for the rest of the world (even Baba went to work as usual!). WE had a Boxing Day as usual. For the Reinsch-Johnson family that means a day in pj’s playing with our new toys and eating leftovers.

The day was nice enough to boot the kids outside for a bit of course.

Echo gave her all as a fairy flitting here and there.

It was the next day – Friday where we got the perfect snowman making snow. And as a promise had been extracted from me to NOT do schoolwork until after New Years, well this Mommy is cringing at the lack of worksheets and spelling tests… just a little!

Though the kids did make good use of those new toys.

We also got our Christmas care package from Grandma and Grandpa Mike. Definitely full of some fun goodies.

The kids had tons of fun over the weekend with their cousins. There was no Sunday school so they played on uninterrupted.

Crafting

Going to a movie with Nana and Baba!

We did a little shopping on the Monday and spent some of our Christmas money, replaced a game we had already and generally had a nice family outing.

Grandma money

Exchanged game

Then we snuck in ONE learning activity – I had taped a new Wild Kratts. So we watched and did our mini poster.

Bullfrogs

Then… well we had one day left to the year… which I will talk about in our next entry!!!

December 26-27

The day AFTER Christmas is very different here in the USA. In Canada it was Boxing Day and for the most part a day off… here in Minnesota we got mail and a lot of people went back to work. It was time for our family to play with their gifts and the adults to take a break. One last day before we ease back into the every day and the “get things done” mentality.

Boxing Day in their South Carolina pj’s

Ken and I ducked out that night to do a little post Christmas shopping. Target wasn’t busy and a lot of the shelves were bare but we had a few awesome finds… first off, Trinity’s Christmas list was completed in the shape of a lovely Holiday Cabbage Patch Doll… Jaelyn Bella (I had to laugh, that is my friend’s Bree’s handle as Echo’s first name was BREE).

A girl and her dolly

And then, while perusing the baby section we came across a miss shelved and reduced Nano bug set… talk about a GREAT find, for Mr. Emanuel!

A very happy boy

I got a second to photograph the package I got in my exchange with my Christian Cross Stitch egroup. I am so in love with the little beaded ornament kit… and well… everything!

So much fun stuff!

The day after the day AFTER Christmas had us facing the idea of school on a minor level again… but we also had our big outing to spend the Christmas money. Well… the kids did. For 2 days running I was thwarted with the hunt for the Kindle Fire case. BUT on the other hand the kids managed to purchase a variety of things, Skylanders, Legos… a potty… a little stressful with 5 kids still buzzing from Christmas but they did well.

It is hard to bring the kids down a bit excitement wise when there is still Christmas trickling in. We have plans for a dinner, packages on their way and of course the very visible reminders of Christmas here in the house. Oh and of course, New Years. Though we do not do anything with the kids really that night. I plan on printing off some simple worksheets for them to do.

Hard at work on her Hello Kitty DS game, in Hello Kitty pj’s of course