Homeschool - Unit Seven: Holidays Around the World

We made our own sticker art snowflakes.  Nolan absolutely loved doing this.  Simon even got in on the action with his very own Christmas tree to stick sticker ornaments on.  This stayed up almost the whole month of December for him and he'd add a few stickers every couple of days.

The kids gathered sticks from the yard and we made them into Christmas tree ornaments for our family members.  We decorated them with beads, buttons, yarn, and faux greenery.  We sent them in care packages to our grandmas and grandpas for Christmas gifts.

We talked at our morning meeting about what we would do to help Santa if he got stuck in the chimney.  They come up with some interesting ideas...a ladder, butter and soap to make him slippery, water, call 911, take apart the roof, take the chimney off...Nolan wrote a story about it and they both made this cute craft.

Simon loved the Christmas tree, always wanted to turn the lights on, and whispered "wow" each time they came on.  He also found that he got some good laughs when he tried tasting the ornaments.

 

We spent a couple of days doing a Grinch mini-unit.  We talked about adjectives for the Grinch at the beginning of the story versus the end.  We discussed similes and metaphors and dissected the song, "You're a Mean One, Mr Grinch."  We also did a directed drawing of the Grinch with our favorite metaphor.  I loved doing this with them!

One of my absolute favorite parts of this unit was our study and celebration of Hanukkah.  The kids learned the story of the Maccabees and the tradition of lighting the menorah.  They made their own menorahs out of cereal.  We listened to a beautiful version of the Hanukkah song, "Ma'oz Tzur."  The best part was our Hanukkah meal.  I made an absolutely delicious beef roast (I'll never make one any other way again!) and Eric fried up some AMAZING latkes.  We tried them both with sour cream and homemade applesauce.  We decided our family is definitely team sour cream.  We also fried up some delicious sufganiyot.  Though they're usually filled with jelly, we filled ours with nutella and they were out of this world amazing!  After dinner, we played our dreidel game.  The kids learned all the words and rules really quickly and we had fun competing for the craisins we used for our pot.  I loved this celebration with them and hope we can have a Hanukkah themed dinner every year.  It may be a great new tradition for our family!

We did science experiments with vinegar and baking soda Christmas shapes.  They had a blast making their shapes bubble!

One of the other really special things we did was to celebrate St.  Lucia Day.  The Vadis family is Swedish and had two Lucia crowns, so they leant us the costume for Olivia to wear.  We decided to make Grandma Edie's cinnamon rolls instead of the traditional saffron buns.  We had Grandma Marcia help us with it over zoom.  We also made some of Aunt Jackie's soft gingerbread cookies.  All of the treats turned out absolutely perfectly.  When St Lucia morning rolled around, Olivia was ecstatic to put on her outfit and deliver the treats.  We enjoyed some at home before we dropped them at Great Grandma Ruby's and Grandpa Steve and Grandma Patti's.  

We did a mini-unit on the book, "The Mitten," by Jan Brett.  We talked about the characters, practiced retelling the story, and made story maps to talk about the beginning, middle, and end of the story.  We also made our own mittens out of felt. 

I finally got brave enough to try a sensory bin with Simon.  It has gone surprisingly well.  He is learning to keep the rice in the bin and he likes spooning the rice into the cups.

The kids made worked on a how to catch Santa essay.  

They played War together.  One of my favorite things about the past year is how close Nolan and Olivia have gotten.  They have become such good friends and it warms my heart to see them play so nicely with each other.

The Frederick Place published their wish list of their most needed items and I invited the kids to use money from their piggy banks to help purchase some of them for the people who live there.  They were both very generous and helped purchase some kitchen utensils, hangers, and aluminum foil.

Sensory bins are fun for all ages!

My kids like to play with our wooden nativity set.  The sun was coming in from the window so she put the stable there because it was the light of Jesus.

Las Posadas is a Mexican celebration of the journey of Joseph and Mary trying to find shelter at the inn.  Traditionally, families go from door to door asking for shelter by singing songs and the innkeeper responds to the song and tells them to go away.  At the final house of the evening, the innkeeper opens the door and they have a great party with yummy food, punch, and a pinata.  Livi was our Mary, Daddy was our Joseph, Simon was a shepherd with his little Lambie, and Nolan was the innkeeper.  They all played their parts beautifully.  Unfortunately our Mexican restaurant was VERY late in delivering our food which significantly cut into our pinata time.  We decided to save it for another time.  This was a really unique and fun thing to do together to get into the Christmas spirit!

We also did a brief study on Diwali, Kwanzaa, and the holiday traditions from Sweden, Austria, and Slovakia.  We have pen pals there through Eric's work.  It was fun to see the many similarities from around the world.  Looking back at all we did in the past month, I can now understand why I'm so tired!  It was such a special experience to get to teach my kids about different cultures and customs, and to spend all of this time together as a family.  I wonder if any of these newtraditions will stick!