January 15-22

We are definitely revisiting some old favourites with our Chinese New Year reading. And with each one recognizing facts we already know and gems yet to be learned. One of my favourite aspects of Chinese New Year is the celebration of prosperity, family and all things positive. We can always use a little positive energy right? We slipped in some time to make a get well soon picture for a mom I met online through a multiples group. We figure a fun picture by the children would be an even better pick me up than a simple card! I am so impressed by the lovely heart all these mommies show. Our new books definitely had the boys ready to read read read. And we made ourselves a stable for our Chinese New Year year of the horse. We got our popsicle stick instructions from Activity Village HERE. It was a goup effort. The girls used markers decorate the stick while the boys did the gluing together. This week was the week of sweet Echo pics. She is in the middle of a hat phase and 2013’s Christmas present from myself fits her better this year – a teddybear ear hat. I got the pattern off of CrochetSpot HERE. The next day we had to brush out her hair, dress her up and take a few big girl pictures too. The girls also modeled the aprons I made them for Christmas in front of the kitchen set they got from Aunty Holly, Uncle James and Cousin Jimmie! You can find that pattern HERE. Friday was a total wash with a run to deal with passports. A WHOLE morning eaten up by the rather intense application process at the only office in the state. We had an appointment time thank goodness and the poor girl had a boatload of paperwork to do. Thankfully Ken and I had wandered down memory lane and got all the transcripts that exist for Ken for the entire time he was in public school. You need that proof to show that he was in the US enough for the kids to qualify for dual citizenship. My OCD of keeping lists of our addresses, baptism forms (which are a viable secondary ID here in the US???) and all that fun stuff came in really handy as well as Nana coming along to wrangle the kids. You have to have them there for a visual confirmation of their application and both myself and Ken to agree that they should even have the darn thing in the first place! But what a gateway passports are to getting all the other ID set up like Social Security and sorting our kids out so that they are set to live in either country! Lucky babies!

After all that government related fun the kids kicked back with some gaming. Funny how touch screens are natural to them!! Our weekend was a quiet one. Saturday there was lots of time to play with those new toys… and for Trinity to work on her sticker book. One of those lovely ones where you pick up sticker packs and collect what you need. Of course on Sunday they had Sunday School and an excuse to take ANOTHER picture of them all dressed up. I look forward to spring when going as a whole family and staying for service will be much more reasonable. We did luck out with the Sunday afternoon thaw. It was so nice that the kids were out there without coats, shovels in hand to help clear out the driveway. We are not on the best side of the street for the sun to melt it all away completely. We are loving the idea we found on Facebook of freezing coloured water in balloons to freeze and then burst and display. Nana and the kids have expanded to include freezing coloured water in other containers to add to what they are now calling her ice garden. My favourite is the blue balloon. We started the next week with dinosaurs… potty sticker sheets (still spotty luck on that one)… and well dressed scouts… and boys in the mood to learn how to swim!

On Tuesday we roped Daddy into teaching us about the first of 3 Chinese locations – the Great Wall (which became Trinity’s favourite). I have to admit to some interest myself on that amazing landmark.

With a Lego rendition of a portion of the wall

Of course we continued with other learning leaning to China and all things Chinese New Year. We used Activity Village AND the official Kai-Lan site thanks to Nick Jr. HERE. Even Echo is getting in on the language practice.

We had a short reflection on what we could remember so far about China and Chinese New Year. I do love seeing what sticks in their brains.

And of course more stories.

We rounded off our first half of the week with some lovely dragons all ready to dance thanks to the generosity of Lakeshore. At our last visit to them to craft it up we mentioned we could not make this upcoming week… Ken had his vasectomy scheduled. So the girl gave us the shapes to add to our own paperbags. I had the presence of mind to photocopy this for future use!

Miss Trinity had a proud workbook completion…

And Emanuel lost ANOTHER tooth. So time for a tooth fairy note!

More Chinese Characters…

books…

and creative time…

With the kids covering Terracotta warriors with Daddy! 

I think we are well on our way to enjoying our countdown to our second very special New Year celebration of our year.

So I figured I would make a companion post of links and such for our poster and its contents. I mainly took from Activity Village and Education.com. These are amazing sources that I would recommend every time.

General information about China

• Map
• Introduction to
• Traditional Dress
• Tangram Puzzles

Zodiac

• The Zodiac story
• Find your animal
• Story colouring page
• Jigsaw puzzle
• Booklets, we used them to write something nice about each person
• Bookmarks, I used them as an end of unit special treat
• 12 animal cards

Year of the Snake

• Specific information, you will need to add in the year 2013
• Dragon Dancers colouring and counting page
• Animal Worksheets
• Characteristic posters

Books:

• Ms. Frizzles Adventures: Imperial China
• Happy Chinese New Year, Kai-Lan!
• Nat Geo Celebrate Chinese New Year
• Sam and the Lucky Money
• The Runaway Wok
  
• Bringing in the New Year
  
• Max Celebrates Chinese New Year
  

I got our Happy Chinese New Year Characters from THIS site. I got it verified by Xinny so I was sure it was the correct ones. For all ideas crafty check Activity Village HERE. For our fortune cookie recipe go to the Food Network. The collection I have for Chinese New Year on Education.com is HERE, I will review all the resources and leave comments on some. I plan to every year add to these collections so I will try and link them.

January 6-7

Well, we are coming to the end of our time with Ted… his flight home is the evening of the 8th – after the guys plan to go to a 3D showing of Top Gun at an Imax theatre. They are only showing it that way in select theatres and only for 8 days! A terrific final event for an amazing visit. Having Ted here has been amazing… we have had time to chat, time to play and time to just sit and hang out like we used to. Trinity and Echo has renewed their love of time with Uncle Ted and the boys have had him playing Skylanders and Legos and more. As you can tell from Trinity’s photo blog entry HERE, his iPhone was a hit as well!

And snow on top of it!

Ken dropped his parents at the airport hours before the rest of us were awake. They are gone for 7 weeks in sunny Mexico. It was definitely different not having them here… though we did take the day at a more relaxed pace. Any big change to the household seems to work best for us if we do that. So with a FINISHED Lego crane to enjoy I could not help but allow them to enjoy it to the fullest. They earned that one!

LEGOS

We watched TWO new episodes of the Wild Kratts… on Blue Jays and Grey Squirrels and the Caracal. I love it when there is an animal that I know nothing about as well like the Caracal.

Family favourite

Blue Jays and Grey Squirrels

Caracal

Our Chinese New Year work continues with Thursday being our date to start the poster assembly. We have quite a bit so I am thinking there are going to be some pockets to make and some creative space use. One more book to share… once we finish reading it… and of course our crafts to complete.

Even Batman preps for the poster

The guys have enjoyed more gaming time with Ken working from home, one break at lunch for a game and the rest of the time just us with Ken locked away. It should not be much longer before he has a desk at the office! Renovations and reorganization still to be accomplished. Such a weird but AMAZING thought – Ken is WORKING again. YAY! One more step completed, next… we work toward the ability to get our own special home… not forever as I cannot say we will be here in Minnesota forever (in fact, I am sure we won’t) but a long term home full of security and normality. Just what our family has always been working towards.

Gaming

I am rather proud of our Thursday – we wanted to get going on the poster and we did! There was cutting and pasting, taping and folding and even some using of markers. I am sure we will dabble on it a little more on Friday but it is pretty full! Granted, less of China the country and more about stories and celebrations but I think this year we had a lot of fun and learned more than a little about Chinese New Year!

We had one more book to finish with – Ms. Frizzle’s Adventures in Imperial China. We got a lovely list of inventions in this book, things like silk and umbrellas…

Our book

Inventions list

Ken worked from home again, in fact… he was AHEAD after yesterday so was able to run Ted and Sean back to the Source, (a first time for Sean) to pick up something Ted had seen and liked last time. That left me home alone with the kiddos. We tried something new today – I set up different Valentine themed stations, mainly crafts… it worked pretty well though I need MORE ideas or at least more COMPLEX ideas to keep them there long enough to actually get my bath accomplished in a relaxing fashion.

Around the table

This time round we had paper chains, making paper roses, a placemat activity sheet I got at Target, a Kai Lan book we are all working on (super simple purchase from Dollarama last year, not so much Chinese beyond Kai Lan herself but fun) and the book project the twins needed to finish. You can find the instructions for our paper roses thanks to Art for Kids on the Homeschool Classroom site HERE. I honestly think that these roses would be a great gift for ANYONE any age! I was going to put up the paperchain in the tree outside but when we laid it out with our roses in their cup… well they look so pretty together in the sunshine on the table!

Flowers and paper chains

We had another Wild Kratts to watch as well… this one about BEES!

Bzzzzzzz

I ended my evening with a visitor on top of our other visitors! Bree managed to have a decently light day of work and so was able to head over here after and spend some visiting time. She finally got to meet and talk to Ted and Sean… in fact, she played WoW with Ted eons ago! It was great to see her and Lily to be… we are on a day by day wait on the birth of the lovely Lily. When rush hour was over we headed out to Joann’s finally! I was in desperate need of some new yarn… I have a second toilet paper scarf to make AND the need to do an infinity scarf for myself. OH and I couldn’t resist the socks.

Visiting with Bree and Lily to be

Soooo soft

I am hoping to get my Facebook page sorted out for selling again this month as well! I think Bree has caught the crafting bug too… she picked up some supplies to get back to crocheting too! I love it when a friend picks up a craft again. That means someone to chat with and craft. I have missed that here in Minnesota. I had quite the crafting group in Canada.

There is nothing more fun than a box