Last post of 2007!

Merry Christmas to all!

I will be spending a few days away from the blog world..

See you in 2008!

These last few days...

We had a family Christmas Party on Saturday, along with a snow storm! My in- laws had a clown for the party, and all the kids had a lot of fun with her.
Fairy and Dragon also went to Grandma's house to make their yearly gingerbread house, only it was a train this year. It turned out really cute.





We have finished our second AG study now, Kirsten from 1854. We finished the book "Kirsten's Surprise" this afternoon and started baking pepperparkor cookies. They will be cooked in the morning, the dough has to sit overnight. We are all looking forward to these Swedish cookies!

Introducing Fairy, Princess and Dragon....!

I have decided in my new blog to not use our children's real names...so I thought I would introduce their new blog names. I wasn't being very creative tonight, so it is pretty simple, their names reflect mostly their interests in books!
Fairy is the oldest, she is 10 years old and agreed to this name because she does enjoy stories about fairies, and lots of other themes too.
Princess is the youngest, she is 3 1/2 (and you can't forget to say the 1/2). I named her Princess because it is who she is...our little princess!
Dragon is our middle boy, he is almost 9 and he loves fantasy stories that include dragons.
Because reading is such a big part of our lives, I have added the book lists on the left for each of them. They could be a lot longer, but we'll keep them short and just update them to show the current favourites.

Busy getting ready for a family Christmas party

The last couple of days have been filled with baking and wrapping presents.
For baking, we tried some new recipes. They seemed to have turned out nicely. We made Chocolate Candy Cane Cookies , Mint Thins and a Krispy Krunch Bar (that one is from an old cookbook). The Mint Thins were messy to make, but none of us had any issues with a chocolate mess!

The kids also made Snowman Soup to give out to everyone.

This week, we started our next American Girl historical character study with Kirsten (1854). Kirsten just moved to America with her family from Sweden, and this is her first Christmas. We will be learning about St Lucia and making some crafts. The kids and I are planning on making a yarn doll and also painting wooden spoons.

A Day in Toronto...Christmas Windows, Eaton Centre and The Nutcracker!

The Hudson's Bay store windows Christmas displays

At the Eaton's Centre, Outside and Inside the Four Seasons Centre.

We spent the day in Toronto, with some homeschool friends. We had tickets to see a matinee of The Nutcraker. When we first arrived to Toronto, we walked to the Eaton Centre to have some lunch, and looked at the beautiful Christmas window displays at the Hudson's Bay store.

Our seats at The Nutcracker ballet were perfect, front row and in the centre! We couldn't have asked for better seating! We were able to see all the orchestra and even with being that close, we still could see the whole stage. The ballet was amazing. It seemed too short!

We were not allowed to take pictures during the performance, so click here for photos of the ballet.

The Spiderwick Chronicles

We have read and loved the five books as a read aloud in this series and are looking forward to the movie, coming in February 2008. We spent a lot of time reading the Field Guide (pictured above)!
To find out more about the books, visit here.
This link here will bring you to Tony DiTerlizzi's site and this one to Holly Black, the authors.

More Snow Today and some cookies too...

More snow to play in today. The kids enjoyed our snowy backyard this afternoon. We also read more of Josefina's Surprise and baked some New Mexico traditional cookies "bizcochitos"...yummy!

December/Christmas Home Learning

We decided to take December and try a different type of home schooling. We are still doing our daily math but are taking on a more relaxed, less textbook approach for the rest of the day.
We are doing a unit study using the historical American Girl books. I will post more detail each week about these. This week is Josefina in 1824. We are finding out about New Mexico and the traditions of the people that lived during that time period for Christmas.
The kids are also doing some writing each day, using a Christmas story starter. Yesterday was amazing! Usually, writing is not something they enjoy. But they ended up both filling up their page, without complaining or asking how much more they had to write!

Welcome !