December Activities: Week 3

This month has made me once again thankful for homeschool. I feel like this has been a fairly relaxed and enjoyable month. We were able to keep a focus on Christ and the Christmas Story while still fitting other fun stuff that's not really related but often gets mixed in with Christmas, like nutcrackers and trains and penguins. It was the perfect balance of fun without overdoing it and the religious with the secular.

December 17: Trains! Daddy got out his train for us and set it up around the tree (between the village and the presents). We also played with the wooden train tracks. It was a busy day, with shopping and delivering more trays. We finished up the day with a picnic in the living room while we watched Polar Express.

Book: How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Advent: Wise man (Matthew 2:7-9)

December 18: Learn about Christmas in the Book of Mormon. This involved a quick geography lesson and reading from 3 Nephi. We also talked about what it might have been like to be one of the Nephites at the time or one of the shepherds in Bethlehem.

Book: A Night Without Darkness

Advent: Star (Matthew 2:10; 3 Nephi 1)

December 19: Little Fish's Special Day with Mama. Mama days were a little shorter than the Daddy days, since Mama and Baby don't like being apart for much more than a couple hours, but we still had fun doing a little shopping and getting a treat.

Book: The Last Straw (love this book about a camel with too much pride whose heavy load forces him to learn to kneel)

Advent: Camel (Matthew 2:11)

December 20: Beeper's Special Day With Mama. It was fortunate Daddy had so many days off this December so that we were able to do these all during the week. Beeper and I went to a matinee of the new Muppet Movie and followed it up with a little Christmas shopping and donuts.

Book: The Biggest, Best Snowman

Advent: Camel (Matthew 2:12-14)

December 21: Nutrition Unit. This was the only really new thing this year, so I put some time into it. Inspired by one of our new books, I decided we'd do a lesson on the new “My Plate” graphic the US government has put out to replace the “Food Pyramid.” I like this one much better. It makes more sense.



I printed a chart on cardstock with examples of the different food groups, using the colors from the plate. Then I got out pieces of felt in those colors, and we sorted some of the boys' play food by food group. Finally I got out a felt mat I had made of the My Plate graphic and used the play food to show some examples of how to make a balanced meal.



I was very excited about this lesson, so naturally, it didn't go well. Little Fish just wanted to sort the food by color. Beeper didn't want to have anything to do with it at all. He was anxious to move on to playing with his newest building toy (more about that later).

Oh well.

Book: A New, Improved Santa (Santa diets, exercises and gets a new look, then finds out the children liked him the way he was)

Advent: Tree (D&C 89 – Word of Wisdom) (yeah, I meant to have a wise man for this day, but somehow I miscounted)

December 22: Make cookies. Since I have been trying to keep things simple this year, we only made cookies once all month, and I told Beeper and his dad that we'd only do one kind of cookie. They both immediately picked peanut butter blossoms. Those seem to be becoming a tradition around here, which is okay by me, because they are a great cookie for little hands to help with. This time Beeper helped roll the balls in sugar and place them on the tray, unwrap the chocolates and place the chocolates on the cookies when they came out of the oven. (Little Fish didn't get to help due to being sick).

We are getting so good at making these that they were done surprisingly quickly, so I decided to make more after all. I made some sugar cookies and dipped some pretzels, but those I did myself while the boys watched Christmas movies with their dad.

Book: Christmas Oranges

Advent: Camel (watch “Wise Men Seek Jesus”)

December 23: Happy birthday, Joseph Smith. I like taking time out from the Christmas activities every year to have a lesson about Joseph Smith on his birthday. Between that and the Nephite Christmas it kind of brings everything together in a reminder that the gospel is all about Christ. We used our flannel board set to review the story of his first vision.



Beeper also arranged the cookies and pretzels from the day before onto plates for his friends, and we delivered them. He sang “We Wish You A Merry Christmas” at both houses. It was obvious his friends were quite tickled to be getting treats, and he was quite pleased to be delivering them.

Book: a board book we have about Joseph Smith

Advent: Camel (JSH 1:10-19)

December 24: Track Santa online. We have enjoyed this so much in the past, and it is a great geography lesson, so I decided to make it the official activity this year. In addition to the geography, it's a good opportunity to talk about how it's night on the other side of the world when it's day here and why that is. It is really fun to spend those final hours of anticipation imagining where in the world Santa might be at any given moment. The highlight of his day was watching Santa fly over the pyramids. A close second was the Great Wall of China.

Book: What Santa Can't Do

Advent: Shepherd (John 10:1-5, 11-17)