Field Trip!!!

       Besides a boring week of book work we took a trip to the museum and learned about an old fashioned Christmas! I really like this museum. They always dress in period costumes and really talk and engage the kids. 

       This man here has been at the museum every time we have went and Fox loves his talks with him. It is shocking that even Damian listens. He works with kids on an amazing level! He shares stories asks questions and it is all very fun not like a quiz or anything.

Peek At Our Week 11

        The kids are so hyper for Christmas this week! They did the bare minimum for school. Little Elf did make his appearance this week so they all had fun with that. 

Peek At Our week 14

     Our friend Little Elf brought us some gingerbread houses to build to start off our week. This has become some what of a tradition now. It started with Devlin when she was young and now happens pretty much every single year. 

     The best part was daddy coming to build with the kiddos!!

Peek At Our Week 13!!

     The weeks seem to be getting busier and busier, not sure if it is life or Christmas! Our Little Elf made his appearance for the year and surprise he brought a friend!

Little Elf made his appearance at first some years back. He is not the typical "Elf On A Shelf". He had once sat in my mothers Christmas tree and then growing up he sat in mine. Now he belongs to my children and his antics keep them busy 

every Christmas! Last year he brought a reindeer friend, this year it is a St. Bernard. As usual he thrills Skyler. Now that the other kids are a bit older they help with Little Elf. 

He likes sleeping in his little house that he built years ago. 

Apparently his friend was put in the candy cane jail and he was trying to break him out!!

Poor pup!

Our Week!

     I have really lost count on what week number we are on! My blog has been so messed up not being able to post pictures, not being able to do anything and of course blogger has been ZERO help!!! Messing around I finally figured out something was screwy with the compatibility. Oh well, my blog is now working so I am back!! This is the week after Thanksgiving and our first week doing Christmas Around The World!!!! Our little elf came back too! He for sure arrived in style in his Elf Rocket!!!

Now if you go here this awesome mama made this rocket printable for free!! Took all of 5 minutes to put together, but the smile on my daughters face was just priceless!!!!  Since his arrival we of course got his house out of the shed. He made this house about 2 years ago. We had wondered for days why all the green and red paint kept vanishing!! LOL

He also was attacked by lego men and saved by a Skylander named Hotdog

Skyler said after all that she wanted him safe and sound in her dollhouse for the day

Now onto Christmas Around The World!!!

I made the cutest little suitcases from here.

They were just so very adorable!! By the way this was a freebie too.

Made them each a passport and they will get tickets for where they visit!! The notebook folder will hold all their pages they make for each place and I got stickers for the passports just by googling free passport stickers or flags for whatever country. Now I also bought a study at Teachers Pay Teachers. I bought it because there were printable mini books for a lot of countries and some other ideas but it wasn't a must have just something I liked. You can for sure do a Christmas Around The World for free. Most of the notebooking pages I am using came from this free study. This is awesome as well and it has blogger links to a lot of people who contributed in different places.

And wouldn't you have known of all places at Walmart I found the perfect book for us!!!

We had to have it! Skyler loved it, Fox was ho hum about it but she really enjoyed it. Of course while reading it I changed one of the towns names to our own so that made it even better by her. We then went to Hawaii because they do Christmas a bit different than the rest of the US. We watched a video and learned how to say Merry Christmas in Hawaii!! They really enjoyed that. We made some crafts.

we then went on to Canada. I really couldn't find much in the Christmas in Canada way all I could find were Canada day crafts and coloring pages so they made Canada Day fortune teller.

We then went to Germany on Friday and I think they liked that most of all. We made cute little shoes from a pattern this mamma made. They were so stinking cute!!!

Here they are by morning

I also printed some cards off about St. Nicholas from the St Nicholas website and found a little print out about the pickle tradition in Germany and my mom even found her old pickle from when she was young. We made paper Gingerbread houses that would store in their suitcases.

Hot chocolate with some gingerbread man marshmallows

The unit I bought had some German paperdolls so they had those to add to their suitcases

We also found our little elf in the fridge after he had a night of making some fudge!!

This is our map after the week we have labeled where we learned about. I just used some little Christmas stickers we had to mark the places and Fox put some twine to each place.

It was a pretty fun week. They did all the other school stuff I just didn't bother with pictures of yet another math sheet or whatever. :)

Week 12

Well, our week started out finding our elf in the fridge! We guess he got stuck after trying to sneak leftover pizza! We also celebrated St. Nicholas Day for the very first time ever! I learned about him of course in Catholic School and I have story books about him but never really got into it much. Skyler has been asking lately about Santa Claus and in my heart I know this is most likely the last year she is gonna believe. I know that the time is coming when all the childhood fairy tales will be over and thats just sad for me.

I feel like there shouls have been more, I wanted 6 kids years and years ago. All boys. I never thought Jack or I would be happy with girls we always talked about boys. I used to dream of our boy that would have his eyes and mouth and curls. I love our girls needless to say though. The one like me and the one like him despite what I always thought. I remember our first Christmas with Devlin. We had our first tree and the presents were stacked taller than her. It was amazing. Years and years of stories and Santa Claus stretched out before us.

All the traditions and stuff still yet to happen. Devlin is 15 and her Santa years over now the baby as we call her is drawing near to that too. I wanted her to learn about St. Nicholas though so she would know he was real and the things he did started a tradition that would bring happiness and joy to children for generations. I loved Christmas growing up. My best memory is of me and my mom and big brother decorating our tree. She would tell us about the ornaments. When she made them, where some came from and how old they were.

Whatever stuff we had made in school or whatever would join all the others on that tree like they were becoming part of history. Now those things all hang on my tree and my childrens things join them year after year. It is a huge hodge podge of things many little hands created for so many years. I had so much fun decorating the first tree with Jack for Devlin. I wish we would have had more trees to decorate. I remember picking out the perfect ornaments it was so silly we wanted to get it just perfect for her. It was I think. It was all just wonderful.

So, we celebrated St. Nicholas by a little stocking filled with treats and a juice box and a St. Nicholas story. I placed them under their little personal trees.

I got each of the kids there own little tress last year on clearance. I thought they were adorable. I split the boxes of minature ornaments Jack bought me forever ago that I refused to hang on our trees cause I was always so scared they would get lost. So the first ornaments my children will have will be those that daddy bought! I admit I am very guilty of missing my kids dad at the Holidays especially. Even when we argued it just always felt complete with him around. Of course all we do is argue so that most likely doesn't spread cheer to the kiddos.

In between the decorating and the Christmas past stories we of course did school. Nothing fantastic just school. Skyler is still loving cursive the boys still hate it! They hate writing too and I have realized that will never change.

They also worked on their "newspaper" for history from Homeschool In The Woods Time Travelers. This one is The Town Crier and they wrote about Jamestown and The Thirteen Colonies.

Of course the highlight of the week was decorating!!

Yes all the little tress are beautiful but Foxs looks awesome!!! He really took his time and I love the way it turned out.

Of course my older daughter wanted no pics posted of her and her tree! It looks great though so you all know!  Of course I had to have a little tree too so mine sits in the schoolroom and is decorated with of couse Harry Potter stuff. I had to make it fit in and by the time the kids said I needed a little tree I had already given away all my mini ornaments! So mine is decorated with things printed offline and a little light up toy train that Fox says is the Hogwarts Express at Christmas.

The Golden Snitch tops it off LOL!

We had fun decorating. I hope everyone else had a great week too.

Wordless Wednesday

Little Elf has returned!

We woke up this morning to find our friend had returned in the night! I think Foxs guards thought he was an intruder! What? You don't have guards? Come on now every little boy who loves Legos have guards all over the house to protect it, right? No! OK then, just me. LOL

Week 10

This week was mostly just math and language arts. I did get the Autumn download and go to start next week though! My kids are getting better in math I am so thrilled with that. The boys are finally up to Lesson 22 in math u see so maybe we can actually start a new level by the new year. They like the clock building. My kids like building anything though.







On a brighter note our elf came back!! We were so happy to see our little buddy again. Of course he has already gotten into mischeif the little fool.

There he was was Monday morning sound asleep on the coffee table with one of Skylers blankets pulled up over him.

On Tuesday morning we found him in a candy coma from eating the rest of Devlins Halloween candy, awww poor guy!!

This morning we woke up to that little buggers fudge! We all love Little Elf and cannot wait to see what her gets up to this year.

Countdown to Christmas Days 22 and the latest from Little Elf!

On the 22nd we read Gingerbread Land and it is a very cool book!! I love books with moving pieces. Jack bought this for me last year at an after Christmas sale so it has pretty much been on a shelf forever. This book is really great I just can't say enough about it. The Description for it from Amazon...

Product Description

In a snowy and faraway land, the Gingerbread people live in a secret world where life is always sweet. Nestled against majestic sugar dusted mountains and crisscrossed with chocolate rivers, Gingerbread Land is a fantasy come to life.

A whimsical land made of candy and gingerbread comes to life in this deliciously designed book. Featuring photographs of three dimensional gingerbread scenes, Gingerbread Land is a delightful book sure to enchant the entire family.

Scenes include ice skaters on the frozen pink lemonade pond, a Ginger family cutting down a lollipop Christmas tree, dancing couples at the Spun Sugar Ball, and much, much more!

If you are looking for a unique book with a Christmasy theme this is it! For our craft we made mini gingerbread houses. Sadly Fox broke his and we couldn't get it to hold together no matter what. They sure had fun though eating the pieces lol.

Well we found the elf in the fridge. Thinking he must have locked himeself in there some how!!

 This is our villiage. I think they got tired of waiting for the icing because the candy just started vanishing. Oh well it was fun and that is all that matters!