crafts

2025-26 School Year–Christmas School

Buon Natale!

This year’s Christmas School is a lead-in to the 2026 Winter Olympics…we learned all about Christmas in Italy!

We started on Saturday, with a trip to The Hill, St. Louis’ Italian neighborhood. We used to attend Christmas on the Hill fairly regularly, but this is the first time we’ve been in several years (at least!).

We enjoyed the Nativity Walk, where we saw the various nativity scenes, or “presepi,” set up in shop windows, and listened to La Befana tell her tale:

And we got to do the activity Chickadee was most looking forward to…we toured the Herbaria, where we learned a little bit about the history of soap, and how they make their soaps right there in store, visited with the store dog, Bubbles, and made a cut-out soap to take home:

Of course we did a few crafts. This year we made cross-stitch ornaments, which was something very new for us. Chickadee also made an Italian flag ornament as a reminder of this year’s theme. We made a string art in the colors of the Italian flag (this was a true group project, as we had to call Bunny in for help!), and, in keeping with the presepi theme (nativity scenes appear to be the most common Christmas decoration in Italy), we made a lantern version to decorate our home.

We baked some Italian Christmas cookies…the classic Italian ricotta cookies, topped with sprinkles in Christmas colors (which conveniently also happen to be the color of the Italian flag), and Italian Rainbow cookies, which are gorgeous and delicious and a true labor of love!

I decided we should do some cooking beyond baking, so I taught Chickadee how to make risotto…pasta making will have to wait until the Olympics (but we are having an Italian-themed Christmas dinner this year, too)!

We met La Befana again at Christmas Tradition in St. Charles, MO:

While we were at Christmas on the Hill, we also got a small chocolate chip Panettone to share…it was delicious!

We also read lots of Italian Christmas stories, including several versions of the La Befana tale, each of which portrays her in a slightly different light. And to end what is essentially the first semester of the 2025-26 school year, we stopped at our new Dutch Bros. Coffee for a little treat!

This was a fun way to end school before Christmas break…Merry Christmas!

Summer School 2025

This year’s summer school was very fun and something close to my heart…we looked at the history of fashion and fashions from around the world!

We had a small list of books and hands-on activity kits that were the basis for our historical knowledge:

  • Fashion: The Definitive History of Costume and Style
  • What People Wore When: A Complete Illustrated History of Costume from Ancient Times to the Nineteenth Century for Every Level of Society
  • Sketch Your Style: A Guided Sketchbook for Drawing Your Dream Wardrobe
  • Coco Chanel: Pearls, Perfume, and the Little Black Dress
  • Fancy Party Gowns: The Story of Fashion Designer Ann Cole Lowe
  • Klutz Tiny Fashion Studio Craft Kit
  • Fashion Design Kit

From there, we started with the basics…how color, pattern, and texture are the foundations of any fashion, and how fashion and true style are different. This was the part of the summer where I got to share my opinions on the topic, especially emphasizing that “fashion is about fitting in; style is about standing out.” We talked about things like couture vs. fast fashion, how popular fashions have influenced body image, the purpose of uniforms in various settings, and how things like rationing during war times forced styles to change. We even watched some bits from fashion shows, and discussed how the styles at shows do not necessarily reflect what even the designers expect the average person to wear in any given season.

What was really exciting, though, were the field trips we were able to go on, neither of which I was aware of when I chose the topic! First, we went to “Roaring” at the St Louis Art Museum, which focused on art, fashion, and automobiles in France from 1918-1939. We got to see a lot of cool designs (including one by Coco Chanel!), and Chickadee worked on sketching some of her favorites:

They even had a whimsical photo opp, which we both enjoyed:

And on a more serious note, we also toured the “Stitching History from the Holocaust” exhibit at the St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum. This exhibit gave us beautiful clothes to admire, but also a lot to think about…I’m very grateful that I ran across it!

There were plenty of opportunities for crafting and creativity this summer:

And we even had a guest designer make a beautiful creation…Bunny crafted this gorgeous pink dress!

This year’s summer school was very different because I only had one student, but it was also a lot of fun to talk about fashion throughout time and across the world!

Summer School 2024

I can’t believe that both the Olympics and summer vacation are over, but here we are. There were so many great moments, and today I’m taking a look back at our Paris 2024-themed summer school, starting with our visit to the Olympic Spectacular right here in St. Louis:

We made our favorite edible Olympic torches, and had a lovely toast to Paris 2024 with sparkling cider. I’m not going to lie, I was a little mad that we had already built the Lego Eiffel Tower years ago, because it would have been a nice summer school activity, but at least we had a ready-made centerpiece!

Our big activity for the summer was trying out some French recipes. We cooked a lot of different things, starting with a special series of meals for the Opening Ceremonies, and culminating with the pièce de résistance of the summer (and maybe my culinary career!), the Croquembouche. It’s nice that we’re finally at a point where both Ladybug and Chickadee can do a lot in the kitchen!

  • Croissants
  • Salade Niçoise
  • Vichyssoise
  • Bœuf Bourgignon
  • Macarons
  • Crepes
  • Salade Lyonnaise
  • Quiche Lorraine
  • Chocolate Soufflé
  • Gougères
  • Lavender Madeleines
  • Steak au Poivre with Red Wine Pan Sauce
  • Plateau de Fromages
  • Lemon-glazed French Sable Cookies
  • Croquembouche

I had a good book list, but coming up with crafts beyond cooking was a bit of a challenge. We did try to be fashion designers…do you think we’re ready for French haute couture?

And of course we made medals:

We had a lot of fun being creative with cooking and crafts!

I’m so glad Ticket to Ride Paris came out in time for us to play this summer! And we also played Ticket to Ride France (and watched all of the episodes of Rick Steves’ Europe we have set in France), which educated us on just how little we know about French geography!

Here’s a look at our complete medal table…Team USA definitely won!

Summer wrapped up quickly…on Monday, we begin the 2024-25 school year!

Summer School 2023

Time for a look back at this year’s Fairytale-themed summer school!

I came up with four crafts to go with all of the stories we read, and I’m actually pretty proud of how creative I was to come up with them. My favorite might have been “Rumpelstiltskin’s straw-into-gold ornaments.” We made traditional Scandinavian straw stars, and then spray-painted them gold…they’re really pretty, and we have the materials and tools to make more at Christmas!

If that wasn’t my favorite craft, our Lego enchanted rose was. The idea was mine, and I bought all the necessary parts, but the execution was evasive to me…Ladybug, however, sat down with all of the materials and figured out how to make a beautiful centerpiece in no time!

I bought some gingerbread houses last Christmas and put them away for this summer…that’s always a fun craft, and it never turns out the same way twice!

And we also put together a fairy garden…we couldn’t believe how quickly the sprouts started coming up, and we’re looking forward to continuing to care for it!

We didn’t do as much cooking and baking as I had hoped (mainly because we were so busy making recipes from Lilo and Stitch: The Official Cookbook), but we did have a few fairytale dinners:

  • Fennel and Red Cabbage Slaw (The Brothers Grimm Cookbook)
  • Rapunzel…Angel-hair Pasta (The Brothers Grimm Cookbook)
  • Apple Punch (The Brothers Grimm Cookbook)
  • Mini Marbled Kugelhopfs (Fairytale Baking)
  • Golden Mountain Paella (The Brothers Grimm Cookbook)
  • Chocolate Ring (Fairytale Baking)

The only thing truly missing from this year’s summer school was a field trip…try as I might, I just couldn’t make that kind of connection. But it was a pretty fun, relaxed way to learn this summer, and that was really nice!

2022-23 School Year–Christmas School

Fröhliche Weihnachten!

This year’s Christmas School theme was Christmas in Germany (and Austria). Everything came together in an amazing fashion, so that we had lots of experiences, read lots of stories, did lots of baking, and made some cool crafts. But first, an ornament craft to remind us of our summer vacation…memory spheres:

Back to Christmas in Germany. We got to meet the Christkind (an angel who is often the present-bearer in Germany) when we were at Christmas Traditions in St. Charles, MO:

We made five different German Christmas cookies that we had never made before…Lebkuchen (German-style gingerbread), Vanillekipferl (vanilla crescents), Pfeffernusse (spice cookies), Kardamom Plaetzchen (chocolate dipped cardamon cookies), and Zimtsterne (cinnamon stars). We got to try some new baking techniques, which was a lot of fun, and the house has smelled amazing!

We also made five crafts inspired by Germany or of German origin…painted hearts inspired by Lebkuchenherzen (gingerbread hearts), a Weihnachtspyramide, ornaments inspired by the German flag and printed with words related to Advent, Fröbelstern (elaborately folded paper stars named for Friedrich Fröbel, the creator of the first kindergarten in Bad Blankenburg, Thuringia, Germany), and the German classic, Zwetschgenmännle (prune people).

Here’s a look at the Weihnachtspyramide in motion…I think it was our favorite craft!

We visited our town Christkindlmarket several times this month:

And we even got to attend a Weihnachtsgottesdienst (German Christmas service)!

It’s not often that Christmas School comes together this well, and provides us with so many fun opportunities…I really enjoyed it!

Summer School 2022

What can I say about this year’s summer school? One thing is for certain…I know I’ll never top it!

Yes, we had a reading list, and there were some amazing choices on there (Ladybug in particular really enjoyed many of the titles), but this summer was all about travel and experiences, including visits to Walt Disney World’s EPCOT, Hollywood Studios, Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom. It was like four days of field trips on steroids, where we went on rides, built things, and even learned things! (And let’s not forgot the three days of field trip equivalents in Washington D.C., where we visited monuments and memorials and museums, toured the US Capitol, and walked the grounds of George Washington’s Mount Vernon! Plus the day at Kennedy Space Center after our Disney fun concluded!)

Back at home, we kept the Disney magic going with art projects:

And games:

And lots and lots of cooking! We had 12 “Disney Dinners” at home over the summer (plus the one we indulged in at The Hollywood Brown Derby), which let us sample copycat recipes from the theme parks and the Disney World resorts:

Ladybug and Bunny especially enjoyed baking and decorating some Mickey Mouse cookies:

It wouldn’t be summer school without a Lego build, and we found the perfect set to reflect our summer fun!

And we squeezed in a few craft projects, including an amazing pumpkin coach, a cupcake liner lei modeled by Stitch, and a string art Mickey Mouse head that left glitter everywhere!

We also watched a ton of Disney documentaries (thank you Disney+) and classic Disney movies, some we had seen before, and some that were new to us. I especially loved the mid-century documentaries from when the theme parks were just getting their start, but the more modern ones, that focused on attractions we saw at Disney World (and their California counterparts) were fascinating, especially after we had the experience of seeing them first-hand.

Like I said, there won’t ever be a summer school like this again, where we were able to blend fun and learning and so many experiences together, but I’m really glad we got to do it once in our lifetime!

2022 Beijing Winter Olympics Wrap-Up

Beijing 2022 certainly did go by quickly! We can never dedicate as much time to the Winter Olympics as we can to the Summer Games, either in school, or just watching for fun. We did try to fit in as much Olympics as possible though, which always begins with trying new recipes that reflect the cuisine of the host nation, starting with our dinner for the Opening Ceremony and continuing through the events with special meals here and there:

  • Scallion pancakes
  • Sticky ginger shrimp with scallion rice
  • Bok Choy
  • Don tot
  • Mango pudding
  • Congee with mustard greens
  • Chinese crullers
  • Xiao long bao
  • Chinese snowflake cake (raspberry and coconut)
  • Potstickers
  • Chinese noodle soup
  • Nai Wong Bao

We also managed to fit in a few crafts…Chinese plum blossoms, unique medals for the Winter Olympics, and an adorable dragon made out of cupcake liners:

Here’s a look at our completed medal chart…I was really hoping that by some miracle, Jamaica would win one medal, but no such luck! At least every other country we were following made it to the podium.

This was a complicated Olympics, and I’m left with a feeling of ennui about the whole thing, but I think we still managed to enjoy ourselves, and I know we liked trying new foods! I will say that I hope this is the last Olympics I see competed in front of empty arenas…here’s hoping for better from Paris 2024!

2021-22 School Year–Week Twenty

It’s so hard to fit school in when the Olympics are on!

We did still have a busy week of school, though. Ladybug did more work with the Pythagorean Theorem in geometry, this time with 45-45-90 triangles. The first subject of the school year has been finished, as she completed the last lesson in vocabulary. We talked about Darwin and the difference between macroevolution and microevolution in biology. She read about Sargon II in history. We started fit four of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Chickadee learned how to calculate perimeter, area, and volume in math. We read about crustaceans in science. She started her study of US geography…we began close to home, with a few midwestern states. She is almost done with her study of Greek mythology…this week, we read the stories of Theseus and Oedipus.

While we don’t have as much time to dedicate to the Winter Olympics as I would like, we have managed to work a few things into our school days. Taking a cue from the Opening Ceremony, which focused on the coming of spring, we did a fun plum blossom craft. In addition to our Opening Ceremony dinner, today we also tried a recipe for congee, a rice porridge, topped with mustard greens…it was surprisingly popular!

We also took some time to recognize the Platinum Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II this week. In addition to the tea party we had on Sunday, we started working on a fun yarn craft, which will hopefully turn into a bunting we can hang up in the school room:

I have a few more Olympics-themed activities planned to go with our school days next, too!

2021-22 School Year–Christmas School

This week was a lot of fun, because it was Christmas School! Once Ladybug took her science test, and Chickadee finished up her science assignments as well, all we did was read A Christmas Carol and Letters from Father Christmas and bake cookies, do crafts, and watch The Nutcracker.

On Monday we watched the Dutch National Ballet Nutcracker, made traditional paper snowflakes, and baked Christmas Island coconut macaroons:

On Tuesday we watched the Royal Ballet Nutcracker, made popsicle stick snowflakes, and baked chocolate Madelines:

On Wednesday we watched the Bolshoi Ballet Nutcracker, made beaded snowflakes, and baked Filipino puto seko:

On Thursday we watched the Vienna Staatsoper Nutcracker, made q-tip snowflakes, and baked Czech poppyseed cookies:

Today we watched the San Francisco Ballet Nutcracker (my favorite!), made 3-D paper snowflakes, and baked chocolate crinkle cookies:

Several of the snowflake crafts we made could be used as ornaments, but we also had a specific ornament for the year…painted clay ornaments cut out with Christmas cookie cutters I bought just for this project:

In the end, we tried three new cookies recipes (plus a variation on Madelines we had never made before) and two new craft projects. It was fun to have both and old new things to try, and it was nice to have a relaxing week of school!

Summer School 2021

It seemed like the postponed Tokyo 2020 Olympics would never get here, and now they’ve already come and gone. Here’s a look back at our Japan-themed summer school.

We visited Origami in the Garden at the Missouri Botanical several times over the summer. The large-scale art installation was the perfect field trip to coincide with Tokyo 2020 (and was also postponed from last summer).

We also visited the Olympic Spectacular in St. Louis at Francis Field, home of the 1904 Summer Games:

I made a few fun treats for the Olympics…Olympics torches (white chocolate covered pretzels) and Team USA CHEERios treats.

We did a lot of cooking and tried a lot of Japanese foods. I worked really hard to find things we hadn’t had before, and used a variety of cooking methods and unfamiliar ingredients. We tried:

  • Spicy Ramen/Udon
  • Pork Gyoza
  • Coffee Jelly
  • Okonomiyaki
  • Matcha Mochi Cake
  • Vegetable Tempura
  • Potato Korokke
  • Fluffy Japanese Cheesecake
  • Kani Cream Korokke
  • Chicken Katsu Sandwich
  • Matcha Green Tea Cookies
  • Oyakodon

We were supposed to go out to a Japanese restaurant this summer, but COVID-19, so we got a party platter of sushi instead:

I’ve been holding on to the Lego Architecture Tokyo skyline since last year, and we finally got to build it!

Our American Girl dolls got into the Olympic spirit:

In between watching as much of the Olympics as we could, we also did some more traditional school work. We learned about Japanese history and culture, as well as the history of the Olympics. We read a lot of books…some I read out loud, and some were book basket choices. We also watched a selection of Olympic documentaries:

  • First—London 2012
  • The Everlasting Flame—Beijing 2008
  • Atlanta’s Olympic Glory—Atlanta 1996
  • 16 Days of Glory—Los Angeles 1984
  • Athens 2004: Stories of Olympic Glory
  • Seoul 1988

And we also did several crafts, including origami, paper lanterns, Koinobori (Japanese carp windsocks), pipe cleaner and tissue paper cherry blossom branches, and medals (of course!):

I’ve been holding on to Ticket to Ride: Japan since last year, and we finally had a chance to play! I really enjoyed the new game mechanics introduced in this edition, and it was fun to get to know the geography of the area a little bit better.

We updated our medal chart every evening…here’s a look at the final results…we were very excited that the US won the gold medal race and had the most medals overall!

And, better late than never, our Family Olympics, which was delayed due to heat. We only had four events this year (frisbee throw, broad jump, soccer kicks, and a running race), thanks to time constraints and a lack of basketball hoops on the backboards we normally use. Technically, Turkey came in first, but since we participate as a family, we all won gold!

This summer school was a long time coming. I think we all still have mixed feelings about the fact that the Olympics were held at this time, but we had to just accept that that was out of our control, and embrace the Olympics as we usually do. It’s always hard to say goodbye when they extinguish the flame, but the Winter Olympics are less than six months away, and we only have to wait three more years for Paris 2024!