Counting, Crafts and St Nick

This week Mini Piwi was busy busy with all her Christmas Crafts. She can't get enough since we started Truth in the Tinsel.

The Christmas sensory box made it's first appearance. It was pretty popular....

For St Nicholas day we gave Krispie cringle a makeover to make our own little St Nicholas

 

 

 

Playing dominoes for the first time with Big Sis!

 

 



Truth in the tinsel 'song'

 

Miss K was writing her letter to Santa on St Nicholas day and Mini Piwi insisted she was going to write one too! She told me what she would like and then signed her name and added stickers.

Mini Piwi helped make Happy Herbivore's Self crusting pumpkin pie. As soon as I step in the kitchen now she is carrying her 'helping chair' to see what's going on and help out.  The pie was yum!!

This week we worked on counting by adding buttons to Gingerbread men. We went up to 5.

Mini Piwi loved it.

 

This week we also shared our Favorite books....

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Turkeys & Christmas decorations

Big kid-stuff or 2nd-grade with Miss K



Our Advent plans 

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Big Kid stuff: 2nd grade

Miss K pointed out that we haven't done many posts on her work lately. I tried to point out that she does appear in the Tot school and Truth in the tinsel posts more often than not. I got 'the look'. So here is a what second grade looks like for Miss K -this week.

 

Every day we do Monkey Math. This is basically a Monkey decorated folder full of fun worksheets that review that skills Miss K has learnt or needs extra practice in. The worksheets are either from teacher file box or abc teach or if I can't find what we need, I make my own. We also use IXL.com as a way to track comprehension and progress.

 

Several times a day Miss K wants to take a 'Perry break' and give our fuzzy boy some attention. He is usually asleep nearby.

 

 This week we finished up the length section of Metric Measuring. Math in Focus is still working for Miss K. Here she is at the start of the section measuring curves with string. By the end of this week she was using what she had learnt to solve real world distance, length and height world problems.

 

Most of Miss K's reading and language is based around Advent this month. The Amanda Bennet unit study we are using has been great for her as after we go through the day's readings together, Miss K can use the links in the PDF to research the answers to the questions. To this we add lots of books and our spelling and vocab lists.
 

 

Rather than printing out the note booking pages included in the unit study we are using a spiral notebook and Miss K is decorating the pages herself.

 

Yesterday was the feast of St Nicholas. Catholic icing had some great ideas for this celebration. They also directed us to the St Nicholas center which is full of information and has a kids section full of games and crafts. Miss K played a bunch of games and quizzes and then used what she had learnt to write a biography of St Nicholas. While we were waiting for dinner to cook, we all sat done to make our own little St Nicks by giving Chocolate Crispie Kringles a makeover.

 

We also wrote our letters to Santa....Miss K used an anchor chart I had made a while ago to remind her what a friendly letter looks like.

The highlight of the week for the Miss K was definately putting up the Christmas tree and unpacking the Christmas books we store with our decorations.

What Miss K is reading:

 

 

Update:

 

I showed Miss K the post and she wanted me to say that she did a lot of other things this week -I just didn't take pictures of it. She also reminded me that she also made a lapbook for Mini Piwi and that she has been working on planning Mini Piwi's birthday. I stand corrected.

 

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Our favorite Christmas books

Our Advent Plans
Save 40% on a IXL Math subscription

 

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Our Favorite Books this week

Most of the books this week are Christmas themed to complement our month long Unit studies. I blogged about these here. It's not too late to get your copy!



E-book and printables
 

We got our copy of the Amanda Bennet Christmas Study on sale for $6

Some of our top ten list we own and are annual family favorites. Others we found at the Library during our weekly visit.

A Turkey for Thanksgiving was one from the Library that I wish we had found earlier! It is about a group of Animals trying to track down a Turkey who has gone into hiding because he is convinced he is going to be Thanksgiving dinner not a Dinner guest. It is very cute and the Piwi's loved the twist at the end. Click on the picture to see the cute illustrations.

A little Camel is given an important package to carry on his long Journey to find a baby king. He and his Mama travel with 3 wise men following a brilliant Star. The paintings are beautiful and really make us realize how far these men travelled to find the Baby Jesus. It also got us talking about how Jesus was a king and they give him gifts as such, even though he didn't live in Palace or wear an earthly crown.

 

Anything Clifford is a family favorite!

 

We have The story of Mary board book version. We have had it since Miss K was tiny. It is a great introduction to the Nativity story and the kids love searching for the little mouse that is on each page.

The paintings in this book are so lifelike and the Kitty is like a mixture of all the Cats we know. The writing is like a long poem, describing all that kitty sees, hears and smells on Christmas eve and what he gets up to while his family are at church.

We watched the movie Arthur Christmas last week and it's storyline revolves around a line of Santa's that are descended from the first Santa, St Nicholas. It was nice to see a commercial movie trying to make a Christian connection to Santa. It inspired us to read even more about this generous Bishop that lived 300 years after Jesus was born. We also plan to celebrate the feast of St Nicholas with Crafts and Decorating our Family tree.

Piwi Mini especially loves lifting all the flaps to find cute surprises
 

 

 

 A pop up book we can sing along to...we were sold!

 

This was definitely the favorite this week as the Piwi's love all the Australian animals that appear in this cute, unconventional nativity play. Wombat has been waiting to be old enough to be in the Nativity, but is there a part he can play?

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