Just a quick note – Activity Village has gone to membership, we found it rather reasonable and so paid in. This means I will still be posting their links. Some things are free, I will try to remember to indicate what is in the future! 

I let the twins chose a unit study for history to start out their new year. This has been a mixed success as the time it took to work on this unit was longer than expected and had us running into seasonal projects. So I do need to work on amping up our time on US history and ignoring some of the softer “fun” topics.

I looked all over for a good free lapbook resource to no avail. So we splurged and got a lapbook from Currclick – Slavery in North America by Hands of a Child. It was worth every penny!

Of course I requested books from the library:

• Freedom From Slavery by Brianna Hall
• Slavery: The Struggle for Freedom by James Meadows
• Many Thousands Gone by Virginia Hamilton
• Frederick Douglass by Suzanne Slade
• Slavery in the United States by Rebecca Rissman
• Passenger on the Pearl by Winifred Conkling

Instead of covering Thanksgiving once again and going into massive detail on a first meal that may or may not (most likely NOT) happened as it has been repeated along with all sorts of cultural issues we focused on one thing this year – The Mayflower. We decided to make a fact poster and still do a few fun Thanksgiving themed worksheets.

We used the following library books:

• You Wouldn’t Want to Sail on the Mayflower (A Trip That Took Entirely Too Long) by Peter Cook
• The Mayflower Compact by Judith Lloyd Yero
• Mayflower 1620 by Plimoth Plantations
• We also requested, but did not get to – The Mayflower and the Pilgrims’ New World by Nathaniel Philbrick which looked rather interesting.

For worksheets do check out Activity Village’s Thanksgiving sheets HERE, Education.com has my Thanksgiving folder HERE and EnchantedLearning is a great help HERE (this is a link to my search results). I would suggest lots of google searches but those are my three go to sites (some membership fees to access everything are required for Education.com and EnchantedLearning).

Our Mayflower fact poster

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!! 

We covered Christmas in a new way… we found some lapbooks and some mini units and worked our way through some interesting topics. I feel like I should include some of the links and a brief overview of what we used:

• The history of Wassailing…. this was a booklet topic in our lapbook series and something that we had never discussed. You can find a good link HERE. Most of these are from the site WhyChristmas.com
• The history of the Christmas Cracker. We had these one year at my mom’s and they were a hit. You can find this one HERE.
• Holly (and Ivy). Greens and their part in Christmas is actually rather interesting. Read some more HERE.
• Christmas presents. Why do we give presents? HERE
• Just what DO kids leave for Santa around the world? This was an especially fun one for the boys who laughed at some of the ideas. We may just have to leave something different out next Christmas ourselves! This article is from the site Mother Nature Network HERE.
• Christmas in Sweden. This was a suggestion from our lapbook… the diversity of other Christmases is amazing and one I think we need to focus on more. Our own traditions are fun but to implement some others… could be an adventure! Back to the WhyChristmas.com site HERE.
• The history of the Nativity plays. Why are they so popular and universal? HERE
• Saint Nicholas Day in Europe. Another unique tradition. Link thanks to TimeAndDate.com HERE.
• Mince Pies, a British tradition. Link thanks to Project Britain HERE.
• The history of Christmas Cards… I don’t know why but I enjoy these histories of ideas. And Christmas Cards was interesting. Link thanks to WhyChristmas.com HERE.
• The history of Christmas Stockings thanks to ChristmasWithLove.com HERE.
• We had to go to Wiki for a couple topics… Christmas Trees (HERE) and the Star of Bethelehem (HERE).

Useful materials:

• Christmas Symbols… a lapbook you can purchase from Currclick HERE.
• I could not find out Candy Cane unity that we originally purchased from Currclick up for download but this lapbook from Homeschool Share looks like a fun one that we will have to try out for ourselves another year. HERE

I know this is super brief compared to other entries but I especially wanted to share the webpages we found with all the somewhat obscure knowledge the kids found entertaining! For books… well sky is the limit! We do have our family favourites of course but there is so much out there that is informational at the libraries!