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!! 

March has been a busy month! For Easter, with only a week and a half between it and St. Patrick’s Day, we are doing a family lapbook. Which means another resource entry! Books:

• Easter by Trudi Strain Trueit
• Piggy Bunny by Rachel Vail
• Ollie’s Easter Eggs by Olivier Dunrea
• The Easter Bunny’s Assistant by Jan Thomas
• Lily’s Easter Party by Crystal Bowman
• Easter by Let’s See Library: Holidays
• Celebrate Easter by Deborah Heiligman
• Julie Andrews’ Treasury for All Season by Julie Andrews and Emma Walton Hamilton

Worksheets:

• 3 Digit Easter Subtraction with Education.com
• Egg-citing Addition with Education.com
• Easter Coordinate Puzzles with Activity Village
• Easter Game and Lapbook Printables with Confessions of a Homeschooler
• Resurrection Lapbook with Lapbook Lessons
• Easter Themed Clock Work with Education.com
• Easter Egg Maze with Activity Village
• L is for Lily by First School
• Easter Subtraction Word Problems with Education.com
• Easter Missing Vowels with Education.com
• Colour the Egg with Education.com
• Word Problems for Easter with Education.com

Crafts

• Peter Rabbit Egg Basket with nickjr.com
• Handprint Lily with Spoonful.com
• Easter Bunny Stand-ups with Education.com
• Ressurrection Egg Lapbook Lesson with Sunday School Lady
• Weave a Paper Basket with Education.com
• Easter Backet Printable by Art For Kids through The Homeschool Classroom

Games

• Easter Goodies Game with Education.com

Movie

• ‘Twas the Night Before Easter with Veggie Tales and the colouring page that goes with
• Dinosaur Train Eggstravaganza by PBS kids… not so much Easter but egg and baby related. Lots of fun as it tied in eggs, new birth and our beloved dinsaurs

Printables in General

• Joke Mini Book with Activity Village
• Easter colouring pages with Activity Village
• Easter Sampler with CurrClick
• Jellybean Prayer with poem with CurrClick

Helpful information sites

• To answer why there is an Easter Bunny with KidCulture
• To answer why we dye Easter Eggs with Yahoo! Answers

Videos Ken found us this informative but slightly over the boys’ heads video on Easter traditions. Very interesting but maybe not for the youngest students.

And a picture of two of our lapbook pages! Good luck! 

We had a lot of fun with this unit

For all of our Easter resources please refer to the blog entry titled “Easter Resources“.

March 18-19

Sometimes you just have to stop and take a breather and since the previous weekend was St. Patrick’s Day and we shuffled some of our unit ending stuff (like assembly of the poster) to Saturday out of the necessity of having to make Wednesday a light day (VISITORS!!!) I figured it was best to throw all but our final St. P’s book, worksheet and our spelling out the window and do a jimjam day.

All at work

What was memorable?

Final book

In fact, our first in a year really! Those who had been keen to get dressed in the morning had the option to get back in their sleepwear and the rest of us grabbed pillows and blankets and sat back to relax.

Pj’s with accessories

After as much tv (with some blatantly educational stuff squished in for good measure… Word Girl, Handy Manny and his Spanish…) as anyone wanted and some yummy food for meals and snacks we moved onto Minecraft. I think one or two made their way outside to play in the snow too but so much was coming down it was just not much fun I am told. We have gotten a TON of snow this weekend!!!

Tuesday was back to the grind stone… though at a quicker pace than we are used to to catch up. Dinosaurs and Easter galore! We had our first Easter book – Easter by Trudi Strain Trueit.

Eggs!

Again, I am making a resource blog for this theme. So at the end of the series I will post all our links etc. If you are interested in something you see us doing here in the meantime drop me a line and I will send along my resources. I do love Activity Village and Education.com (both links on the right) for my thematic worksheets though!

A jumble of learning

We made TWO cards today, thumb prints of course. One is already in the mail box on its way to the birthday girl. The other is for Baby Lily. The kids have definitely gotten into the creative mode with these.. cats, hedgehogs, even a sheep have made their way onto the page.

Just waiting for words and signatures

We finally found a moment to record our special St. Patrick’s Day poem: The Fairies out of Sally Go Round the Stars by Sarah Webb and Claire Ranson.

Fairies

Up the airy mountain,

Down the rushy glen,

We daren’t go a-hunting

For fear of little men;

Wee folk, good folk,

Trooping all together;

Green jacket, red cap,

And white owl’s feather.

The book we got it from

We ended our night with a movie… Veggie Tales: The Night Before Easter… not a bad ending to our day with popcorn and all!

The movie

Movie and popcorn

Tomorrow we start our Easter poem memorizing. Although instead of a poem… we are doing a song!!! Wish us luck!

Emanuel sharing his dinosaur time with Echo!