Christmas Study Plans

I have been planning our Christmas study plans for a few weeks now.  They have come together nicely and I’m very excited about all we hope to do. 

I came across a link for a book called ‘The Christ Book’.  You put it together in a 3 ring binder.  I knew as soon as I saw it I wanted to do it throughout the month of December leading up to Christmas day. 

In it are seventeen scriptures and short stories/info about Christ.  The book is about Christ’s life from birth to resurrection. 

There are pictures and songs to go with each day as well.  I burned a CD from LDS.org of all the songs so we could have the music ready to play as we sing them each day.  All of the printables for the song words, scripture/short story for each day are a free download from Sew Dang Cute.  I purchased the picture packet needed from LDS.org for $4.

I wanted to do a Twelve Days of Christmas with the kids this year.  I’ve never done this before and thought it would be something fun for all of us.  I found a really neat one at The Craft Patch.  You print a story for each day and have a go along candy as a treat. 

I put the candies in brown lunch sacks, printed the stories, rolled them up and attached them to the bags using ribbon.  I also attached a number for each day to all of the bags.  I found some cute numbers to print at Oh My Gluestick, laminated them, punched them out with a circle punch and then put a whole in the top with a one hole punch.  This is going to be fun! I knew I wanted to make various ornaments and crafts throughout the month while we read holiday books, but hadn’t quite finished this part of my planning until yesterday.  My friend, Jenny (thank you so much, Jenny!), emailed me an awesome link from A Day of Wonders for a Story Book Tree.  This was just what I needed to make my plans complete. 

I got an inexpensive 4 ft. table top tree to use for our Story Book Tree.  I am going to print, laminate and cut out a small book cover image of the books we read to attach to a homemade ornament that represents the book.  We can all make ornaments for our tree.  I hope to make this a tradition and as our tree fills up we can get a bigger one to replace it.  Our tree in the living room ‘died’ this year, so this was really a perfect fix and will be such a special tree to look at each year as we remember the stories and the homemade ornaments. Here are the books and ornaments I hope to read/make for our tree this year:

• The Gingerbread Man – cardboard gingerbread men
• The Little Fir Tree – pinecone ‘Christmas trees’, footprint tree for Jesse
• The Cobweb Christmas – brooms
• Christmas Magic/Snowmen at Night – craft stick snowman for Joe and a fun puff paint snowman craft for Jack; bottlecap snowman for Hanna, footprint snowmen for Jesse
• The Legend of the Poinsettia – mason jar lids felt poinsettias
• Dream Snow – clear glass ball ornaments filled with fake snow and covered with snowflake stickers
• Mouse’s First Christmas – beaded, pipe cleaner candy canes
• Olive the Other Reindeer – puzzle piece reindeer
• Room for a Little One/Mortimer’s Christmas Manger – craft stick angels (Hanna), manger craft for Jack, handprint angel for Jesse
• The Finest Christmas Tree – craft stick Christmas tree
• Bear’s Christmas Star – star tree topper (Joe)

I love and treasure this time of year.  There is just something that feels so cozy and so special about it.  I am looking forward to all that we have planned as we celebrate this wonderful time of year together as a family.

Cranberry Thanksgiving (Five in a Row)

(November 14-23) In order to get ready for the Thanksgiving holiday and learn as much as we could about the history behind this holiday we rowed Cranberry Thanksgiving.  This was a fun row.  It turned out to be all I’d hoped it would and more.  We are still greatly enjoying Five in a Row and the unit study approach.  Cranberry Thanksgiving is a favorite holiday read of ours, so Joe was excited when I told him it would be our book for the week. 

Social Studies: Geography – New England

We located the eight New England states on the map and briefly discussed what each one is noted for, as well as what New England is known for as a whole—cranberries, maple syrup, ship building historic sites and so forth. Judging by Appearance

We discussed how it’s unfair to judge others by their outward appearance—that it’s what’s inside and a person’s actions that matter and determine what kind of character a person has.  We used the example from the book of Maggie’s grandmother unfairly judging Mr. Whisker’s based on his appearance and smell.

History – Thanksgiving

We spent a huge part of the week on our history study of Thanksgiving.  We used the book …If You Sailed on the Mayflower in 1620 for our studies.  This was my first time reading this book.  It is a wonderful read, easily understood and fascinating.  Joe and I both thoroughly enjoyed it, learned lots and I’m sure we’ll reread it for years to come.

I made a Mayflower Facts book for Joe out of brown grocery bags, wooden skewer, white paper and 1st grade writing paper I printed from Donna Young.  After we finished reading our Mayflower book Joe wrote five facts inside his facts book that he found interesting.

I made a suitcase from brown cardstock and had Joe write and draw, “What I’d Take on the Mayflower”, inside. Language: Elements of a Good Story

Joe and I talked about the following elements in a story:  title, author, setting, important events, conflict, resolution and theme—what they are and what they mean, how to identify them—this is something I plan to do with him off and on throughout this school year when we are reading a book that the elements are easily identified.  He did pretty good with it considering it was his first time ever learning any of this.  We did a lot of it together though and I’m sure we will for some time to come.

I made a story map using the back of our FIAR animal classification board, printables, cardstock and post-its.  I used a printable for Joe’s small story board as well.  **All of the materials I used in this row can be found at the end of this post.** Art

We didn’t do any formal art lessons for this row.  The kids made handprint turkeys.

Joe made a handprint Mayflower ship.

We read A Plump and Perky Turkey and both boys completed projects based on this book.  Jack made a paper plate turkey.

Joe wrote and illustrated a printable titled, “How to Catch a Turkey”.

Joe played the following Language Arts games—noun/verb sort:

Ten Little Indians adjective/verb complete the sentence.  This was fun for Joe and he liked this game a lot.

Math

Besides daily Singapore lessons, Joe mainly played math games for review of addition and subtraction this week.

Science: Cranberries

We learned about cranberries—where they are grown, how they are harvested and conducted a simple sink float experiement with them in our own homemade cranberry bog. 

First, to see where they are grown we watched a Dirty Jobs episode on Netflix about cranberry bogs and the wet harvesting process.  I like this show and this was a great episode. 

Next, we talked about whether cranberries sink or float.  Joe guessed float and told me it was because he thought they were filled with air.  We cut one open to see if he was right and he was.

We tested whether he was right about them floating, and again, he was.  Finally, we made a homemade cranberry bog using a plastic pan.  All three boys LOVED this!  It made for some fun outside play.

Jesse thought this was fantastic and had a blast!

The boys had fun bobbing for cranberries too. 

Jack enjoyed puzzles, “How many feathers on the turkey?”, and homemade pumpkin pie play doh.  I’d gotten him some new play doh tools especially for this row and he loved them.

I made pumpkin cookies and served them with cranberry juice.  Joe thought it was too sour, but surprisingly Jack loved it and asked for it all week.

I also made cranberry bread using the recipe in the back of Cranberry Thanksgiving. When I tried making this last year it wasn’t good, but this year it turned out great and was delicious!  We ate it up super fast and I plan to make more over Christmas. 

Here are most of Joe’s finished lapjournal pages:

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving as a family.  We are very much looking forward to Christmas and all of the special memories that go along with it each year.  We are so blessed.  I am almost finished planning our Christmas studies and will be posting them soon—I’m excited to start that fun the end of this week!

Ideas, inspiration and printables for Cranberry Thanksgiving can be found at:

• Five in a Row Volume 1 manual
• Homeschool Share’s Cranberry Thanksgiving unit
• The First Grade Parade – Mayflower Facts book and Mayflower suitcase
• How to Catch a Turkey printable
• Printables on Pilgrims and Indians from Teachers Pay Teachers
• Paper plate perky turkey
• Thanksgiving Preschool Pack from Lawteedah
•  cranberry science from Almost Unschoolers
• Almost Unschoolers Mayflower handprint ship
• Create, Teach, Share’s Post-It Story Map printables *here* and *here*

Scarecrow Unit

 

(November 7-11)  We spent a week reading scarecrow books, making scarecrow crafts, completing a scarecrow Preschool Pack and a First Grade Scarecrow Math and Literacy unit from Teachers Pay Teachers.  We had a lot of fun!  I love this time of year and am just so excited about all that we have done this month. 

Jack practiced scissor skills:

Dot marker pages:

Pre-Writing Tracer Pages—Thank you all SO MUCH for recommending an easel for correcting his pencil grip problems.  I have ordered a large table top easel and can’t wait to have him start using it.

He also had fun counting out crows for his scarecrow.

I made scarecrow cookies for the kids.  We all enjoyed eating them.  They turned out cute too.  I enjoy so much making these themed surprises for them.  They act like they are just the best ever no matter how simple, and I like knowing it makes them happy.

Jack made a shapes scarecrow.  His favorite parts of school hands down are crafts and play doh.  He gets so excited when we do a craft or I pull out play doh.  He took his time and did such a good job gluing his scarecrow together.  He is getting much more patient whether it’s counting or crafting and this is wonderful to watch happen.

He also made mosaic Indian corn.  He loved gluing all the tiny pieces onto the corn.  When he filled up his corn to his satisfaction he kept gluing the squares onto a piece of white paper.  I kept cutting more and more colored paper for him.  He did this for almost an hour!

Joe made a ‘not so scary scarecrow’ watercolor and collage from Deep Space Sparkle.  He followed my instructions perfectly and did great!  I love how it turned out.

He completed lots of activities from the Scarecrow unit I purchased…Scarecrow Money Match:

 

   Syllable Sort:

Clapping out the syllables in each word. Scarecrow Sentence Scramble:

   Build-a-Scarecrow dice game (simple addition and subtraction)

Scarecrow ABC order (This was Joe’s first introduction to ordering words alphabetically.  He did a great job and caught on pretty fast.) :

Here are the boys’ finished lapjournal pages.  I put them all in one collage this time, but I think it’s pretty self-explanatory which ones are Joe’s and which ones are Jack’s.

We had a good time with scarecrows.  Even though this wasn’t a full scale unit study encompassing all subjects, I think we covered important areas and Joe learned new things like ABC order and more about sentence structure.  We are more than making up for the lack of science and history the rest of the month and we are currently having fun with cranberries, pilgrims and Indians!