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 5-6

Middle of the week comes and goes and with it another busy busy day! Poor Baba is feeling under the weather but yours truly feels more the norm. I have to admit, having SOMETHING to do (aka attempt, however impossibly to find my immunization records.. yah right) and the knowledge that Ken IS talking to people and making progress just soothes the soul. It is something I have been working on and fighting with… I just do not handle massive anxiety well, though once the issue has passed or we gain control I am able to smooth right out. Certainly NOT helpful.

We have continued our making of cards, colouring of pictures and working on word searches – all Christmas themed! Trinity has fallen in love with colouring CANDY CANES! Thankfully no one else is complaining.

Today’s big family together time was baking cookies. Nana had picked up sugar cookie dough so while she was out with the weekly time with the cousins and Baba in bed we baked. Again all 5 together elbow deep in dough and flour. So much fun! Though they are definitely not our usual sugar cookie. Ken and I are a bit picky about our cookies after all and love the recipe I got from my mom. BUT everyone else loved them!

With Daddy

Echo at work

Busy bees

Can you tell which is Echo’s masterpiece?

We are hard at work on the first of our Christmas Carols for our mini concert we plan to post on youTube… Away in a Manger. It started out as just the twins and now the younger ones are trickling in to learn too. I wish we had found a Sunday School and the chance to really make it to church regularly but I think that this is our second choice. I am proud of their wish to share these moments with you all… as I was told VERY clearly we HAVE to post this, after all did you know that GRANDMA wants to hear them sing too?? (yup mom they said that SERIOUSLY)

We also did our “Things I Like About Christmas” print out, we did this one last year as well. You can find it on Activity Village. I have printed off extras so that we can continue to do it each year. I love hearing what is important to them each Christmas!

Last year and this year

Thursday was an even better day, though the twins were a little ill. We did another Candy Cane themed craft and made Candy Cane Hearts!

Yummy hearts

Again thanks to Activity Village. Trinity and I lucked out and found tri-cornered beads, so we took some of our special Christmas coloured pipe cleaners and made special beaded candy canes.  I think that each of the kids has done this craft and I was worried that this year we would not come across the right beads to make one for Trinity. She did rather well with her pattern on the one (only a mistake or two) and her yellow one seems to shine! I was so proud of her!

Stringing beads together

The golden version

We read ANOTHER book… Santa’s Snow Cat… so another journal page. Just a cover style illustration with the title written on the page. I am not making them do much more than enjoy the story and the family time with these Christmas themed books. Don’t forget Santa Bear from a previous day!

Santa’s Snow Cat

Santa Bear

I want to try an idea I saw online next year and wrap up 25 NEW Christmas books and then each day open one with the kids and read it! We also had a MATH day… we went online and hunted around for free Christmas themed workpages and printed off a bunch. A lot of adding and subtracting and recognizing which is which. I am hoping to make January a math month, the past few months we have REALLY been focused on the reading.

Joint creation

We, of course, had to work on ELVES from Art for Kids! Zander added his to his already VERY active Santa! I look forward to saving these instructions for years to come! 

So much fun!

Add to that our daily Advent with videos and colouring pages and the kids are rather happy with the direction our learning has gone. I took a poll and it turns out that the kids prefer next week to be REINDEER themed instead of gingerbread. I have been hunting down Rudolf related pages and whatever I can find for colouring for Trinity. Don’t forget our Christmas themed drawings thanks to Art for Kids!!!

Our little resting copy cats watching Christmas themed tv