Christmas Homeschool Fun

 

I adore how programs that we follow for homeschooling naturally flow into the different holidays and liturgical themes of the year!  Even our Latin program has us learning Christmas words and phrases, which is so much fun this time of year!  It truly makes it feel like we are just living life, learning about the world and experiences around us and not even doing "school".  We still love Memoria Press's Enrichment guides and all of the rich literature, art, music and poetry that it introduces to our family.  The past few weeks we have been reading and expanding upon The Polar Express and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.  I am enjoying having two of our children fluently reading so that they are able to read the books independently and out loud for us all!  We also have read a "new to our family" book this season called Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree which we all simply adored and have read again, and again and again!

St Lucia's Feast Day

We LOVE St. Lucia's Feast Day, and started celebrating it in our family four years ago now with the tradition of driving around and looking at Christmas lights to celebrate the Patron Saint of Light!  I have a good feeling what our a part of our kids top 10 favorite feast days, but they announced this year that St. Lucia's feast day may be there FAVORITE, even more than St. Nicholas.  I adore that they are getting old enough to really remember traditions that we are making and to take responsibility to help put them together!

 

This year, a new tradition that we started was that each week of Advent our children got to each light the next candle (in their birth order).  Our third son Luke, had been WAITING to light the pink candle and was so excited when Guadete Sunday arrived!  We also got out my Kirsten American Girl doll and read her Christmas story.  My husband was off work in the evening and surprised us by preparing an amazing leg of lamb for dinner.  It was truly a feast!

 

After dinner the kids got in their pajamas, we made popcorn and hot cocoa and Ryan decorated our van with Christmas lights (which we learned is their favorite part of this tradition).  We then went around and looked at Christmas lights. It was SO MUCH FUN to ride around town, singing Christmas carols as a family and watch all of the kids different personalities shining thru.  Ryan wanted to know how everything worked, Connor laughed and shrieked in excitement at beautiful displays, Luke danced to the music and Peter pointed at everything saying "WHOA!"  It was a night to remember.

 

 

 

Below is a blast from the past to remember all of our other St. Lucia celebrations!  I love to see how the kids have changed and how we have celebrated!

 

2013

 

2014

 

2015

 

 

 

Our Lady of Guadalupe and National Poinsettia Day

We celebrate the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe and also National Poinsettia Day on December 12th.  We are so lucky to have a BEAUTIFUL poinsettia display in our town at the Lauritzen Gardens.  We went to daily mass and then met my parents to explore the beautiful gardens and watch the trains that weave amongst the wintery plants.  

Because it was National Poinsettia Day the garden was giving out free poinsettias.  When we got home we chose to read The Legend of the Poinsettia by Tomie dePaola together and then read more about Our Lady of Guadalupe and the people of Mexico!

Happy Baptism Anniversary Connor

Connor loves celebrating his Baptism Anniversary during Advent every year as his baptism anniversary is on December 11th.  This year was extra special because his baptism anniversary fell on Gaudete Sunday!  We got out Connor's baptism candle to light, said a special family prayer and he received a fun little gift.  Then we went to mass, and afterwards our parish priest gave Connor a special blessing.  These little things make these anniversaries fun and memorable for the kids and make them understand the gift and importance of the sacraments that they recieve!

Connor's Baptism Anniversary 2015

Connor's Baptism Anniversary 2014

The Beginning of Advent

Advent has had a great start around here.  I took some much needed time away from social media to allow myself of the graces of more space and time.  It has been incredibly fruitful for myself, my marriage and my family.  There have been wonderful feast days to celebrate, lots of past traditions and even a few new ones.  There has been a lot of reading, cuddling around the fire, laughter and family time.  It is good for heart, really good. 

 

Here is the first few weeks of our Advent in pictures!

 

 

St. Andrew's novena is my FAVORITE novena of the year.  This year our families intention is very near to my heart and God's ability to support us and answer our prayers always continues to simply amaze me.

 

Blessed is She hit it out of the park again with this year's Advent journal By the Manger in the Morning.  This book, my bible, and my cup of coffee gets my day going right!

 

I love decorating our house and we continue to add more Advent decorations instead of simply Christmas decorations.  We have our Advent tree with purple, pink and silver decorations which we love and I adore this simple "Wait in Joyful Hope" decoration which amazingly switches to saying "NOEL" for the Christmas season!

 

 

One of my favorite things EVER might be snuggling up with a good book to a fire with Christmas lights.  It is so beautiful and amazingly peaceful, which can be rare to experience with a house of four little boys!

 

Every year I try to do a handprint craft with the kids to capture those little growing fingers in the current moment!  With having four children this year I thought it would be really fun to do this cute Advent craft with their handprints as the greenery.  I love how it looks and glows with the light thru the window!

 

 

We have a new tradition this year of writing in an Advent journal together as a family (plus I adore how it has the St. Andrew's Novena prayer on it!).  We can record prayers, stories, drawings or whatever is in our hearts.  It think it is a really special way to come together as a family as our children continue to get older and have more personal thoughts and reflections.

 

We have been slowly bringing Advent and Christmas crafts and art projects into our school work and they bring so much joy to the kids.  Our three year old has recently gotten into the Dot Markers and he will sit and do his "ink projects" while the older kids work on structured school work.  It is wonderful!

Outside activities have been slowing down and we have had a lot of time home together as a family.  It is good to focus on family and watch our boys truly develop friendships and their amusing imaginative play!

 

We were even able to sneak away for some adult time, which is always enjoyable, but especially fun during Advent!  We are off to a good start!

The Feast of St. Nicholas Fun

On December 6th we celebrate the feast of St. Nicholas, which is probably our family's current favorite feast day!  Knowing that St. Nicholas is the patron saint of children and our home is filled with lots of little one, I guess this only makes sense!  On December 5th we decided to do a giant baking day to make sure to have some yummy snacks ready for St. Nicholas.  We ended up baking over 200 cookies and the kids had SO much fun decorating.  It is so nice to have them getting older because it was the first year that they were actually really helping.  They measured out ingredients and had a blast decorating everything.

That night we cuddled up to read some stories about St. Nicholas, put out some cookies, our Letters to Jesus and laid out our shoes!  

Then, the next morning the children woke up to the fun miracle of St. Nicholas having visited our home and leaving great treats.  They received gold chocolate coins, candy canes, Christmas plates, a new book and a small toy each.  Santa Clause does not visit our house on Christmas Eve, but instead on his feast day, so it is always exciting to have an "extra" super fun morning in our home! Plus, our Connor had dressed up as St. Nicholas for our All Saints Day party this year and he was so excited to get out his costume and hand out treats to everyone that we saw during the day!

That evening, St Nicholas himself was visiting the Durham Western Museum in our town so we knew we had to stop by to say hello!

It was a beautiful evening and since we were already downtown to visit St. Nicholas we decided to have our fun continue by going to take a walk on the Pedestrian bridge which crosses from Nebraska to Iowa.  The kids think that it is so cool to be able to be standing in two states at once!

To finish our fun feast day we went to the Gene Lehy Mall to go down the big slides and look at all of the beautiful Christmas lights.  It was such a fun feast day and definitely one to remember for years to come!