On Thursday I had to take one last opportunity to add a few special activities to our regular school day, before we said goodbye to the Christmas season.

We started the day with stockings. Because we had spent so much time learning about Christmas in Italy (including the La Befana legend), I thought it would be fun to have a few small things in the stockings to wake up to on Epiphany morning, as Epiphany is the traditional Christmas-time gift-giving day in Italy. Plus, I was able to take advantage of the Target after-Christmas clearance, so it was also an inexpensive surprise!

In school, we took a short break from our regular work to make Epiphany stars. I found patterns for four, five, six and eight point stars, and Turkey and Bunny colored some, covered some in foil, and glittered some others. They’re all different, and all so pretty hanging from the ceiling of the schoolroom!

We dug out our La Befana stick puppets, and Turkey and Bunny took turns telling the legend. It was really interesting to hear how they embellished the story, and just how different their stories were from each other. They both did a really good job of remembering the story, which was good, since it’s already been over a month since we read the legend in the first place! Time sure does go by fast, especially at Christmastime!

We finished the Epiphany segment of our school day by reading The Visit of the Wise Men. This is a nice book from CPH–the story isn’t anything new, but the illustrations are beautiful. I also appreciate that the book gives a fairly realistic look at what kind of men the wise men were (not kings!). It was also a good springboard for discussion about how Epiphany reminds us that Jesus came for *all* people, not only the Jews. I appreciate any Christmas book that doesn’t gloss over the reason baby Jesus was born, but reminds readers (even children), that the Baby in the manger is the same Man who died for each one of us.