Planning Advent

...is one of the many reasons I have been so very absent this month.

I love Advent. As a child it was a really special time. We had a list of special things that would be done together, one for each day in Advent, pinned up on the fridge where we could all see it. We got to suggest meals we wanted to eat during that time (I guess we could have done this at other times too, perhaps it didn't occur to us!)
Very simple things, like having hot chocolate with candy canes - candy canes are more special if you don't live in the States I think. Or decorating the Christmas tree. Or going to a Christmas market - often the one in the centre of Brussels, where we lived, but sometimes a trip to nearby Germany.
During Advent the classical music that was a staple of our background noise - at least when my dad was in - was replaced with lovely Christmas carols. Not that I don't love classical too, but Christmas carols are wonderful! I have no idea how many CDs of them we must have had. I now have four of my own.

So of course I want Advent to be special for our little ones too. Last year I looked all over the blogosphere for someone who might have laid out a plan of Bible verses and so on to go through in Advent. Couldn't find anything at all. This year, quite by accident, I came upon Hubbards Cupboard, where they have exactly that. Unfortunately it doesn't quite match the order I had in mind, and some days rely on various books we don't have and have no access to, but I was thinking it was pretty good anyway, until I came across something even better:

The Jesse Tree
Jesse tree family devotions

The tree is such a lovely idea, one new decoration each day, each one reminding you of that day's scripture as it leads you gradually through the Old Testament showing God's faithfulness and anticipating the promised Messiah. I'm surprised I haven't come across the concept before, being interested in traditions and also having lived mostly in parts of Europe where Catholicism is the predominant branch of the Church, but thrilled to make a new discovery. Check out the links if you've not come across it before either.

I still want to do the other special things for Advent too though. Here's what we did last year, when Froglet was three:

Day 1: Light Advent candle 1, Put up tree
Day 2: Make red postbox (to keep cards in), make cards
Day 3: "We 3 kings" song, wise men story from Bible stories book
Day 4: Make a star for the door
Day 5: learn "O Christmas Tree"
Days 6-9: No activity (in UK for weekend)
Day 10: Light Advent candle 2, Christmas story with donkey
Day 11: Bake scones, have cream tea
Day 12: Put up nativity scene minus shepherds
Day 13: "Deck the halls" song
Day 14: Open red postbox and hang up cards
Day 15: Light Advent candle 3, Christmas party with Froglet's godparents
Day 16: Shepherds' story, "While shepherds watched"
Day 17: Add shepherds to scene
Day 18: Wrap gifts, "we wish you a merry Christmas"
Day 19: Make gingerbread for house
Day 20: Decorate gingerbread house
Day 21: Froglet to nursery for special Christmas crafts morning, "Silent Night"
Day 22: Light advent candle 4, add Jesus to scene
Day 23: "Away in a manger"
Day 24: To Brussels for Christmas with grandparents

Each of these activities was written down on a slip of paper which I read out to him in the morning when he opened his advent bag containing the paper and a chocolate coin or small gift. We bought a small box of Lego bits and divided them up between some of the bags, which was a big hit, but we're not doing it this year. He has so much Lego already!

To finish with, here are some more links. Use Advent Celebrations to teach Patience by Maren Schmidt, whose Montessori blog/column I enjoy very much.
And What are we waiting for this Advent, which is the start of a series hosted by Christine Sine over at Godspace. Enjoy!

MTM - Bonfire Night

Remember, remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder treason and plot
I see no reason why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.

We had our muffin tin on Friday to celebrate Bonfire Night. Which was actually on Thursday, but never mind. Bonfire Night is when the English, and presumably the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish as well, remember the attempted blowing up of Parliament in 1605. (Story below) Here is our tin:

We have fire-coloured tins containing mung bean sprouts (no reason for these), Yorkshire parkin and custard, marmite on toast "guys" with a chocolate penny, sparklers and cinnamon stars for fireworks. The meaning of these becomes clearer once you know what bonfire night is about!

The brief story is that James the first and his government were very repressive towards Catholics. (And I do mean very). And so some Catholics got rather tired of this and decided that a new government was needed, and they filled a cellar under the Houses of Parliament with gunpowder in barrels, and coal and wood. And they intended to blow it all up at a time when Parliament would be in session on November the 5th. But someone tipped off one of the MPs and they were discovered. Guy Fawkes was the person there at the time and so he was tortured for the names of his friends, which he refused to give. Eventually the conspirators, or at least some of them, were caught and sentenced to an unpleasant death, and King James ordered bonfires to be lit in the streets to celebrate that Parliament (and himself) had been saved. Incidentally, this is the same King James as he of the KJV. Not a very nice person, although he was slightly gentler towards the Catholics in later life.

You might wonder why anyone nowadays would celebrate such an unpleasant happening - an attempted act of terrorism foiled by an equally unpleasant government - and the answer is because it's traditional. Nowadays everyone has fireworks (for the gunpowder) and a bonfire on Bonfire Night, and pretty much everyone, at least of my age, knows the rhyme above. Children used to make a "Guy" out of old clothes and trundle him round the streets calling out "a penny for the guy" so people would give them some money to buy fireworks. I imagine they may still do this in some places but probably not most. That's where your word guy meaning a man in general comes from, by the way. :-) And parkin is traditionally eaten on bonfire night too, at least in the North.

But I told Froglet the story so we could talk about how when people are cruel to others, sooner or later the others will turn around and do something unpleasant back (in this case I mean James being almost Inquisitional towards the Catholics and them responding by trying to blow him up).

Froglet school week 2: A

Literacy:
This week we revised letter X with some writing, and learnt letter A using the Starfall sheets and website. Although the writing exercise lets you do capital and lower-case letters, we're mostly focusing on lower-case.

Maths:
Froglet got two new pages of raisin maths adding up to 8 and 9. I like to mix the results because otherwise I think he would quickly work out that the answer is always 8 (or whatever it is). When he's putting the raisins in the boxes, he always arranges them neatly: the first four in the four corners, then number 5 in the middle, number 6 at the top, number seven at the bottom and eight and nine on the left and right. Not sure what he'll do when we get to ten!

Telling the time:
We worked on recognising that it's "something o'clock". I discovered that although he can count up to 15 quite nicely, he actually doesn't recognise numbers beyond 9 at all, and is rather hazy on 6, 8 and 9. (7 is fine). So that's something else to work on.

Froglet school week 1 - letter X

Like the blog title says, I'm not really homeschooling... but I do want Froglet to learn to read in English before he starts school in German next year. I've been teaching him sort of vaguely for about a year now, and he knows all the letters but just doesn't do much in the way of stringing them together. So now we are starting to work at it properly, every day.

Last week we concentrated on X, which is Froglet's initial. He played the x game on Starfall, as well as quite a few of the other letters for fun, and we read two phonics books that include x: The Red Hen and It (Floppy phonics). Then we printed out the x exercise sheet from Starfall and he learnt to write X. Last time I tried doing one of these sheets (a) he wasn't very interested but i think now he's four he must be just the right age because he did it quickly and happily and then we played noughts and crosses together. He even helped me draw the noughts-and-crosses board!
We also watched the "when two vowels go walking" song from Starfall and the longer version from Between The Lions, as we're reviewing EE this week too, and did the ee game on the starfall website.

We read the story of how Jesus washed the disciples' feet, and learnt the verse that says "I have set an example for you, so that you will do just what I have done for you." I'm trying to do a verse and story for each letter. Here the relevant word is example. Then we talked about how we can/do serve others. (After this Froglet went down to the basement all by himself and got the washing out of the machine for me!)

We also did some raisin/smartie/peanut maths. We have these in a transparent folder so he can put the smarties straight on the page and I can just wipe it clean afterwards. So far I've only done pages that add up to 7 - next week we'll add up to 8.

And finally, something I've never done with him before either, patterns. He wasn't so excited about this but he enjoyed playing with his peg board for a while after he had copied a couple of the patterns and then tipped everything out again.

Halloween

I have been seeing so much about pumpkins, dressing up, crafts and other items relating to Halloween recently. Some really cool ideas, others that gross me out - eeew spiders! And although I am a big fan of Harry Potter, I'm not actually so keen on Halloween, especially trick-or-treating. Fortunately we don't have to do anything much because this holiday isn't a big deal in Switzerland. We have our main dressing-up-as-monsters event at the start of Lent instead. It's basically Halloween for a whole week, minus the pumpkins.

But I wanted to join in the fun anyway by linking to this great post by Christine Sine at Godspace, called Getting Ready for Halloween. Whether you believe in celebrating Halloween or really don't like it at all, she has some interesting thoughts. Here's a quote to spark your interest:

Today there seems to be more talk about not celebrating Halloween because it has been so taken over by witches, covens and non Christian groups. But is that the right attitude? How could we redeem the celebration of Halloween and return it to the Christian celebration it once was? How can we enter into the joy and celebration of God’s rhythm of feasting and add to the fun rather than trying to kill it?

I may have more thoughts on this later but I have a German lesson to go to and homeschooling to plan. Where do all you homeschooling mothers find time to blog?!

Things I want to do/make by myself!

Pinwheel bobby pins - I think these would be a cool gift for my little niece.
Danish* heart baskets for Christmas decorations. We used to make these with paper as kids, now I'd like to try with felt.
Finish my knitted blanket for the kids when in the car. It's only taken me a year so far...

That's all for now but I shall add to this list as time goes on, and put a link up in the sidebar like the joint crafts one.

*Random facts about me: I lived in Denmark as a baby, when we would divide our time between Germany and Copenhagen with my dad's job. I then studied Danish at university and lived in Copenhagen on my own for a year. Would love to go back. And the bulk of my translation work is now from Danish to English.

MTM - Childrens Lit

If you're looking for the Save One Mammy post, it's here.

Like I said last week, I'm really excited about this theme. I love books, especially childrens books. Click here to see what everyone else came up with.

Froglet and I picked Star Seeker as our book. It's actually on loan from a friend but we love it so much we're definitely going to buy a copy. We love the poetry, the illustrations and the explanations about the Solar System in the back. It's a great book for any kid interested in outer space.

Click on the photo to get a closer look... I think... Anyway clockwise from right we have:

Cookies on Venus = a gingerbread rocket
Mars, the red planet = bread roll covered in tomato paste
Fireworks on Pluto = yoghurt and raspberries with sprinkles
Moons and asteroids = cheese and pickled onions
Saturn = Pineapple rings and gold-wrapped chocolate
The Milky Way = frothy whipped cream with a gingerbread Bear and a pinwheel, representing the page you can see open (my favourite).

In case you can't read it, it says:

I'll spin like a pinwheel
Through the Milky Way's froth
Take a ride on the Great Bear
And never fall off

Can you guess why cookies for Venus and fireworks for Pluto? :-)