With Students

A few weeks back we went with one of Sean's students to visit her home town which is a touristy village 15 min from here. Here is Caed with Daisy JieJie getting sugar art made. 

Rooster sugar candy

Having a go with archery. Kellie came to visit us from KMG. She is a fellow CA girl :)

Later on during K's visit we took her to another local village area. 

And rode these boats 

Across this reservoir 

To those hills

And climbed up this path through a cave. 

Preschool Party

My friend Ashlei (her son is Grady - C's bff) had a great idea to have a Christmas party in our boys class. the boys go to school on opposite days but have the same teachers and classmates. 

Here is her husband telling the Christmas story...

And being attacked by the kids :)

We played games, the parachute is always a hit. That was money well spent :)

Big smiles

We also did crafts and a snack. 

I made this Christmas cutout and we had all the students take turns putting their heads in, 

And the teachers wanted to as well

Ash and I with Tao and Luo. 

Later I asked C what his favorite part of the party was and he said the cookie snack, I asked his second favorite part and he said the m&m's and pretzels on the cookie snack. 

Christmas Day 2011

Early on Christmas am we read the story from the Jesus Story Book Bible

Caed told us about each ornament he made, each one represented one part of the nativity story. Unfortunately we didn't make it through all of them, next year we will start earlier. I got him on video explaining them and it was pretty cute!

Facetime with Grandma and GP while opening gifts. Thank God it wasn't ting dian (no electricity) here today!

"I - can - not - be -lieve - it!" - Caed while opening his playmobil plane from Grandma and GP.

New dino jammies from JoJo!!! Thanks Polks :) Caed promptly noticed that there was both a girl and boy dino on his shirt. 

Playing with his new plane. 

I was there too

Opening presents with Nana and Papa via skype (seriously thankful for technology). 

In the afternoon we went to Grady's house, where the boys played with each others new presents, 

And exchanged gifts, battle balls :) Which Caed loves. 

Footie Jammie boys

December Art

Here is C with his 'truth in the tinsel' ornament tree. It was his idea to pose with it in his mouth. 

Santa Hands - I did this with the kids I teach as well. 

Reindeer fingerprint thank you cards

Not a craft - but the other day Caed said to me, 

"Mommy can you get out of the kitchen, I am going to do a bad thing." When I asked him what bad thing he would do he said, "Eat butter." So we had a talk and then I got distracted when someone came to the door, turned around a few minutes later and there was C, butter in hand, eating it. GROSSSSS.

Painting Bethlehem. 

Craftyness

A while ago we bought this used shoe cabinet. I covered it with book pages (Treasure Island) and modge podged it. I like it. 

This is another idea off pinterest. I used wrapping paper and spray paint and then hot glued them on the wall. There is a tutorial here. You should go see, hers are way cuter than mine!

Do you ever see an idea online an dthen set out to do it and while your making it you think, "this doesn't look right" but then you are too busy [or lazy] too look at the original and figure out what you did wrong. That happened to me. I saw these cute foot print trees online and made them. 

We even did the whole family and I thought - this just looks strange. And whats up with Sean's foot looking so skinny??? We hung them up anyway though. 

Today I got online and looked at the original - yep I messed up - this is way cuter. 

This worked though. 

Look how cute these sock snowmen ended up! Just socks (and sleeves from one of caed's old shirts) rice, string and buttons! I do have a sneaky little elf in my house who stole one of the noses since I never told him "Don't take out their noses...."

The person who's idea this was has a  tutorial at this site. 

And on the left cute Christmas Isaiah verse free download from JonesDesignCompany. 

December school

This month our homeschool theme is nativity. I got most of our activities from this site.

Here is the spelling games.

I love the concentration on this face!

Caed has not been as excited about homeschool these days, so I am trying to come up with some more motivation for him. 

At his preschool event last week. It was pretty funny. The little girl on the far right is YanYan she is the one who Caed came home one day and told me, "There is a girl in my class who loves me so much, she is so nice to me." 

Here is Caed next to our almost finished advent calander. This is the first year we have done it and he is pretty excited. I got the recommendation to use the Truth In The Tinsel book from that 2teachingmommies website that I get all of Caed's homeschool printables from. It is geared for kids 1-5 and it has been working great for us.

This is the book, it downloads as a PDF and you can get it for $4.99 here.

We started late so are catching up, but the book also has options to do just a week, all 25 days and some other options as well. 

Every day there is a clue that goes in the little package on the advent calander. It is a clue about the story we study that day and the ornament we make for his advent tree. The first day was a candle ornament. Surely more pictures of this to come later.