This week in the school house

This week and next we are in full force Christmas mode. Most, if not all, of our activities will revolve around Christmas.

Sometimes I have moments of genius. This was one of them. The kids and I watched a few videos about making candy canes and then I decided it would be fun for them to decorate ginger bread houses. Only I hate ginger bread and really had no desire to bake at that moment. So we went to our recycling/craft stash and built houses out of cardboard. I made white frosting and the kids used up a lot of the candy I was never going to let them eat. Somehow quite a bit of the frosting ended up in Finnegan's mouth, but all in all this was a very successful craft. The kids were quiet and busy for at least 20 minutes and they were proud of what they created. Oren pretended to want to help, but was just after the smarties.

Maeve started a lapbook Monday about the Night Before Christmas. She's having fun with it and really enjoys lapbooking.

We made ice cream today. The idea came from a kid magazine called High Five. The directions called for chocolate soy milk (yucko) so I made hot chocolate (2 C milk, 1/4 C sugar, 1/8 C cocoa) and cooled it. We put ice and salt into one plastic bag and then the chocolate mixture into another plastic bag. The chocolate bag went inside the ice bag and the kids shook until their arms got tired. Finn's arms were tired from the very beginning apparently because he had no interest whatsoever in participating. It took about 5 min of shaking to get ice cream. The kids thought it was neat and tasted delicious.

We made a Christmas village out of empty boxes. The kids worked hard to decorate the boxes, but quickly lost interest. The village is sitting in a heap on our dining room table.

I made one batch of Italian cookies and plan to make another one with the my helpers. They are super easy to make and can be shaped into just about anything.