snowflakes

Mani Monday

This week’s Mani Monday is inspired by the winter weather so much of the country has been experiencing. This is one of my more complicated manicures…I used Holo Taco “Blue Freezie” topped with “Frost Light” on my thumbnail, “Circuit Breaker” on my index finger, “Sparkling Water” topped with “Frost Light” on my middle finger, “Blue Freezie” on my ring finger, and “Sparkling Water” on my pinkie. I also did my best to add a snowflake in “Circuit Breaker” to my ring finger…like most of my attempts at nail art, it isn’t too neat, but I did my best!

2014-15 School Year–Week Fifteen

This was our last week of school in 2014!

It was a light week. In the mornings, I had the children work on religion, math, very limited language arts, crafts (more on that in a bit), and reading. We also finished A Christmas Carol, and did a poetry study of “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.”

The afternoons were all about fun. I decided that this would be “Nutcracker Week,” which worked out well, because we own recordings of five different productions. We started with the Bolshoi Ballet on Monday, which enabled us to both recognize the Nutcracker’s Russian roots, and continued our study of Christmas in Russia. On Tuesday, we watched our new production for the year–the Vienna State Ballet. Wednesday I was feeling British, so we watched the Royal Ballet performance. We watched what I think is probably our most unique version on Thursday, the Dutch National Ballet’s production. And I saved the best for last…today we watched my all-time favorite, the San Francisco Ballet Nutcracker. I had Turkey and Bunny take notes on what they really liked in each performance (or what they found unusual), and then had them attempt to rank them when we were done, which is no easy feat! (For the record, my ranking goes 1.) San Francisco Ballet; 2.) Dutch National Ballet; 3.) Royal Ballet; 4.) Bolshoi Ballet; and 5.) Vienna State Ballet.)

To go along with my favorite part of the Nutcracker in both music and dance, “The Waltz of the Snowflakes,” we spent some time a few mornings making snowflakes to hang in the schoolroom. Turkey, in particular, enjoyed seeing what patterns he could make, and even I made a few snowflakes. We weren’t happy until we had a full-on blizzard going!

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The snowflakes were craft one. We also made our ornament for the year–a cute clothespin donkey. We had quite the assembly line going to get them finished!

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And, for a fun end-of-the-week activity, I got the new Lego: The Hobbit Lake Town set to go with the sets the children and I built after we finished the book earlier this fall. It’s a small building, but it was fun to build, and added some new minifigs to our Lake Town setup.

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I’m looking forward to taking a break and just having fun for a few weeks, but we’ll be back in 2015, ready for more learning (and fun!).

School: First Day of Winter

Even though the first day of winter was on a Sunday, and technically, we had suspended school for the Christmas holiday the previous Friday, we had a special school day on December 21.  Turkey and Bunny loved this, because Daddy got to come to school, which is something they are always asking for.  We had a special craft activity, a special story, and a movie to watch.

Our craft project for the day was Q-tip snowflakes.  They’re really beautiful, and easy for children to do on their own, because the snowflakes can be as simple or as complex as you want.  There’s a really cool gallery with pictures of actual snowflakes taken with a photo-microscope.  It’s totally worth checking out, and a great reminder of God’s attention to detail.

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This craft was really fun, although I’m really glad I made a sample beforehand, to work out most of the kinks (who knew there was a correct side of the wax paper to use?).  There were still a few minor issues with the snowflakes coming apart when peeling them off the wax paper the second time around, but not as bad as my first two, and a little hot glue fixed them up just fine.

Daddy got to be the narrator for our winter story–Snow, by Roy McKie and P.D. Eastman.  The timing was perfect on this one, because Bunny had received this book as a Christmas present the Friday before (thanks, Uncle Ken!), so we got to read her copy, instead of looking for one at the library.  Turkey and Bunny loved it, and have been asking to read it constantly, as well as planning all the things they would like to do in the snow that they learned about in the book–it would have to snow here first, but that’s besides the point.  They can dream, right?

Finally, we watched our second viewing of the Nutcracker–the San Francisco Ballet production.  I had previewed the second half of this version of the classic ballet a few days prior, and because I was so impressed with it, decided it would make a nice addition to our winter lessons, especially with how beautiful the “Waltz of the Snowflakes” was.  Turkey and Bunny had already seen the Mikhail Baryshnikov production the previous week, in addition to reading the storybook, so they were familiar with the story. They both seemed to prefer the San Francisco Ballet production, in part due to the fact that Baryshnikov leaves out the Sugar Plum Fairy, while the San Francisco Ballet gives her her due.  Regardless, they both sat transfixed through the entire performance a second time, which I find impressive given their ages, and the fact that, as much as even I love the Nutcracker, the music is so soothing, it makes even me want to drift off to sleep!

We have really enjoyed our special change of the season activities for both Fall and Winter–now I just have to come up with something spectacular for spring!  I’m thinking something involving coffee filters, food coloring and pipe cleaners, but I haven’t decided for sure yet.  Stay tuned!