Tomorrow marks the start of our Advent season. The actual sit down organized, what the kids call “boring” education is basically set aside for Christmas fun! Educational Christmas fun, of course… We are doing the Activity Village daily Advent activities (as many as we can and have supplies for), the boys have requested to learn about sleds – I have a few books on hold and what I could get yesterday from the library, and we are doing our Polar Express lapbook! I am excited about that one. We read the book for the first time today and coloured the cover page. I need to fold the two folders for each boy tonight and then we are jumping right on in with two little booklets per day! Add to that anything and everything I can find for them to do, learn, etc and I think we will keep rather busy!

We got some terrific mail today! Cousin Veronika found a Groupon for a 6 in 1 Solar Educational Toy and got it for us to add to our homeschooling supplies! So of course we had to bust it out tonight. Ken and the boys sat at the blue table and made up the puppy version. Tomorrow we are going to put it in the sunlight and take what Ken told them about solar panels and actually SEE them at work! It is adorable too, the finished puppy. After they have a go with it in that form for a while we will pick another. But what a great way to see how we can harness the power of the sun! 

Very cool gift!

Working with Daddy

Completed Dog

I finally got the chance to photograph the little owl ornament I made and put up in my Etsy store to purchase. It is 10.00 plus shipping and I would love to send it to a new home! I have two white ones to finish as well! I really do enjoy making them, I just hope SOMEONE ELSE will enjoy them as much as I have someday! 

Up on my Etsy!

So we got more snow today which made the roads rather treacherous, but Ken managed to get out to the store to get rice and the twins made a go at playing outside. They got cold rather quickly (and refused to wear snowpants) but they ran around and enjoyed the fresh snow. We hope to take them out sledding this weekend. AND apparently the van is FINALLY going in for repairs tomorrow! Keep fingers crossed the part is minor and that is ALL they need to fix as the coolant system is what will be comped. 

Cold but happy

He Chris got roped into post supper stories with Trinity tonight. She took full advantage of his naivety and gave him one of her longest books to read! I had to giggle as everyone else is VERY aware of the pitfalls to reading that particular book! But he did a great job. 

Story Time!

I really wish I  could share more of the crafts I am completing BUT I am taking pictures to share AFTER we give them out!! So for now I say Happy Almost Advent and get back to my crafting! 

Playing in our Little People Nativity set!

The days absolutely fly by when you are far from finished on your crafting Christmas list I am afraid! BUT last night remedied a large portion of the time crunch problem – we had a Wrap-o-palooza at Kristen and Fydo’s to get a lovely chunk of my finished gifts out of the way! I am so happy we got what I had of the kids’ gifts and a few random others wrapped and set aside. I am so thankful for Kristen’s help AND that she let me take advantage of her massive roll of wrapping paper! I am still going to have to buy a roll myself for the rest of my presesnts but a much smaller amount than I originally needed and it will take a lot less time to get them done and out of the way! On top of that, Ken and Fydo got some gaming time and Echo got to be the center of attention at a friend’s house. We had He Chris to babysit and the big kids were asleep by the time we got home!

Echo "helping"

The two days before that we kept busy at home! One afternoon I cleared the blue table… washed everyone down, tied back Trinity’s hair and gave the kids sugar cookie dough, some flour and cookie cutters. A double batch of dough and I didn’t cut out a single cookie! They did brilliant and only a small amount of dough ended up on the floor (crumbs) and an equally small amount of flour ended up on the kids! 

Making cookies!

The next afternoon we painted our Model Magic ornaments. I have some of the Crayola glitter stuff you add to paint and gave each kid a brush, some paint and walked away! We didn’t do too badly. ALL the ornaments got painted, one shirt tossed (it had a hole in it already so the red paint just put the final nail in the coffin) and all 4 kids were rightfully proud of themselves. We had to leave them overnight to be sure the paint dried and add the final touch – a ribbon to hang them on a tree with. 

Painting

More sparkly than they look here

The twins and I battled it out BUT we finished our snowflake lapbooks… AND Gavin sat through (without crying) a re-write on a story he had misplaced. We printed off one of those sheets where there is a beginning part and then you wrote the rest. We got ours HERE. 

Lots of snowflake knowledge here!

I have been working on a duct tape present for a family member and made errors with a couple of my strips. I was able to salvage one for the project and the other got cut down and set aside. Emanuel claimed that one for a bracelet and I had to make Trinity her own out of the purple duct tape I have in the house. They are so proud of their new finery! All I did was fold the strip in half (lengthwise) to make it one inch and then put on velcro circles. Result – happy children for pennies! 

I have posted TWO owls to my Etsy store. Both Christmas themed and hopefully adorable to someone OTHER than me! I did a mini photo shoot in our Christmas tree for fun, of course, of both.

Christmas Owl

We have totally gotten into our Christmas themed stuff. There is a fun printouton Education.com to make little cards and envelopes. We went onto EnchantedLearning and printed off some Christmas themed early reader books and plan on hunting around for some Christmas themed math sheets. Gavin has excelled at moving up to adding two two digit numbers and dealing with results over 100. We have not broached subtracting with 100 yet but I don’t see that as being too far off. I have been told Education.com will have more Christmas themed sheets up presently but with Thanksgiving in the states being yesterday (a belated Happy Thanksgiving to you all) their focus was firmly on themed sheets for that event. 

Emanuel and some of his completed projects

Coloured cars

The focus of the boys is firmly on their remote control cars sadly. They each (the twins) sacrificed an extra week of allowance to get batteries for their cars. So now all they want to do is play with them. Not the quietest or CALMEST indoor entertainment AND they tend to sneak off when I am busy with one thinking I wouldn’t notice the inevitable car driving sounds…

Remote control cars

I have some lovely craft supplies send from a friend who was downsizing her crafting area this week! I am so blessed that other people have extras of what we need more of lately!

Thank You!

Zander also spent some time making a hand pupped to entertain Echo with! I had to help with the antlers but it was all his idea!

Rudolf

My kitchen table is officially a danger zone at this point. So much crafting supplies out and no chance to them going away any time soon. I am certain there is more I could share from the past few days but the combination of late night crafting, strong willed children and Christmas plans have completely turned my brain to mush!!! So off I go back to the crafting and hope that Trinity winds down and goes to sleep BEFORE midnight! 

Tree fairie

Ok, lots to share… TOMORROW… but tonight – a picture! I a proud of this little owl (it is the mate of Echo’s Christmas present). He is made out of a child’s sock so is only 3 1/2 inches tall and on sale in my Etsy store HERE. I had to do a photo shoot… the tree and the owl worked so well together with the candle setting on my camera!! He is much more red than the picture and his inside on his wings a lovely dark green!!

Whoo Whoo