For my (tardy) Virtual Advent Tour post, I’m going to share a Christmas memory and an idea for a simple craft project. Our family had a consistent tradition for Christmas. We didn’t always celebrate other holidays in the same way or in the same place, but with few exceptions, every Christmas was the same. On Christmas Eve, my parents and two younger sisters and I would attend the Christmas Eve service at the small country church near our house with our grandparents (who lived on a neighboring farm), aunts, uncles, and cousins on my Dad’s side of the family. The church didn’t have running water, and you just hoped you wouldn’t need to use one of the outhouses during the service! Afterward we would go to Grandma and Grandpa’s for supper and open gifts. There were so many cousins that we drew names, and eventually the gift exchange was replaced with an ornament exchange that we no longer do because most of us cousins have families of our own now. Some ornaments were homemade, and most were purchased, but each one reminds me of those Christmas memories, which can be bittersweet as my grandparents are no longer with us. On Christmas morning we would go into town to my other grandparents’ house to celebrate with my mom’s side of the family. My Grandma had an ornament for all of her children, grandchildren (and later, great-grandchildren) engraved with our names, and I always had to search for the Shauna ornament on her Christmas tree.
The little church is still in operation and still has no running water, and I’ll be attending the Christmas Eve service there this year with my daughters, one of whom has agreed to be an angel in the Christmas story. We decided to make some ornaments to give to family members (hope they aren’t reading!) after seeing this project on several blogs recently.
Start with some clean, clear glass ornaments, which you can find at any craft store, and carefully remove the metal caps. Hold the open top at an angle and squeeze in some paint. Let it slide down the inside of the ornament for a few minutes, then turn the ornament and add another color. After you’re finished adding paint, set the ornament down on its side in the carton the ornaments came in or an egg carton. Turn the ornament a quarter of a turn or so every so often (we didn’t time it), and the colors will eventually swirl together. Let them dry completely before replacing the caps, and then add ribbon and decorate to your liking. We put a little too much paint in ours (my 4-year-old did her own), but they still turned out well and are each one of a kind!
Today has been such a crazy day that I completely forgot I was scheduled to participate in the Virtual Advent Tour! My apologies to those who have come here expecting a post and not finding one. After the Nyquil wears off and I have a chance to think, I’ll remedy the situation.
Earlier this week, several families from our homeschooling group braved the frigid temps and snow to visit the Denver processing center for Operation Christmas Child. The center receives shoeboxes from neighboring states, and volunteers who are 12 and up sort through them to make sure all the items included in each box follow the guidelines, and they repair or replace anything that may have been damaged. The boxes are then packaged in boxes and shipped to various locations around the world where Samaritan’s Purse delivers them to children in need. On Family Day, kids who are younger than 12 get a chance to visit the processing center, learn more about Operation Christmas Child, and see how their shoebox gets to its intended recipient.
Kids go through Family Day as a group and do activities at different stations. Panama was the first stop in our tour. The kids watched a short movie about Operation Christmas Child and saw video footage of children in Panama receiving their shoeboxes. They also imagined that they were at a shoebox distribution site and sang a song in Spanish.
At another station, the kids became shoeboxes and took an imaginary journey that began with a family packing a shoebox, moved on to a collection site, traveled to a processing center, and ended at their destination country. As we were packing our own shoebox a few weeks ago, my 4-year-old found it difficult to visualize how our box would get to a little girl in another country and thought that she would be personally delivering it. This simple, hands-on exercise helped her understand the process better than just telling her about it.
Another station centered on a large map of the world, where kids saw what countries Samaritan’s Purse serves and heard stories about children who lived there. A relay race in which kids filled a shoebox with items collected from bins across the room was a popular activity. They also got to see the volunteer areas and find out what kinds of items are not appropriate for shoeboxes (e.g., mirrors and other breakable items, liquids, war or military-related toys).
Our box is the blue one with snowflakes on the bottom of the stack.
If you live near one of Operation Christmas Child’s processing centers, consider volunteering or attending a Family Day next year! It’s also not too late to pack a shoebox this year. Visit the Samaritan’s Purse web site to see where to take or send yours.
We found this note at my Grandma’s house recently while going through some old photos and cards. It’s fun to see a snippet from my childhood self and remember that party, which featured a Kermit the Frog cake. I’m going to be more intentional about encouraging my daughter to write more letters, as the personality they express can’t be duplicated by an electronically printed letter.
Timberdoodle’s catalog is full of curriculum resources and products for home educators, and my girls love looking at all the homeschool supplies they feature. They were thrilled to receive a Junior Puzzleball Globe from Timberdoodle for our family to review.
The 3D puzzle made by European game maker Ravensburger features curved plastic puzzle pieces that students assemble to create a sphere. The Junior edition of the Puzzleball Globe includes 96 colorful puzzle pieces that fit together to form a globe illustrated with kid-friendly graphics of birds and animals.
The product is recommended for children ages 6 and up. My 8-year-old daughter, who has always loved puzzles, opted to put it together the first time using the numbers stamped on the back of the curved pieces. She completed the globe puzzle in one sitting and thought it was a nice change from flat cardboard puzzles. No glue is required, and the pieces fit snugly together. For more of a challenge, she’ll try assembling the globe with a map without using the numbers. My 4-year-old isn’t able to do the puzzle by herself, but the pieces are the right size for her and she is able to help her big sister. My husband and I were both surprised and impressed by how sturdy the Puzzleball is when put together! You can toss it in the air and catch it like a regular ball, and the kids even rolled it back and forth to each other on our tile kitchen floor without it coming apart.
Unlike the versions designed for teens and adults, individual countries aren’t identified on the Junior Puzzleball, so its use for geography instruction is limited. The colorful illustrations make the globe appealing to my preschooler. She is now suddenly quite interested in learning about the continents and where things are in the world!
The Junior Puzzleball Globe costs $12.75 and is well worth the price. Puzzleball Globes are also available for older children as well as teens and adults; they come in 240-, 540-, and 960-piece models that include a plastic display base and/or a metal rotation stand. Watch the video below to see how to assemble a Puzzleball and use the included puzzle guides. (The globe in the video contains 540 pieces and is larger than the Junior one, which is about 5″ in diameter.)
Thank you to Timberdoodle for providing a complimentary Puzzleball for us to review for Mama Buzz! We’re quite pleased with it and will certainly use it regularly in our homeschooling program. I will likely purchase one of the other Puzzleball Globes and am designating Ravensburger’s Puzzleball as a Learning Treasure!
We decided to try something new last week and joined other families from our local homeschooling group to go ice skating! Neither of the kids had ever skated before, but they both kept trying and had a great time! (I had fun too, but my calves protested the next day.)
Kailana from The Written World and Marg from Reading Adventures are hosting the 2009 Virtual Advent Tour. As they explain:
The Virtual Advent tour first started when we pondered why should the kids get all the fun of opening a box on the advent calendar and finding a treat in there, and how could we have some blogging fun with a similar concept? So the Virtual Advent tour was born.
Beginning on December 1, bloggers will take turns sharing about their family traditions, recipes, favorite Christmas books and movies, and other holiday fare. You can sign up for a spot in the tour on the Virtual Advent Tour blog. I’ll be posting on December 15.
I just noticed this evening that the neighbors have their Christmas lights up, so as hard as it is to believe that 2009 is coming to a close, it seems appropriate that we received Gwen Ellis’s retelling of The Story of Christmas recently! Steve Smallman illustrated this 24-page children’s version of the Christmas story as told in the books of Luke and Matthew, beginning with the birth of John the Baptist and ending with the return of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus to Nazareth following the death of King Herod. A DVD includes these events as well as stories from the life of Jesus.
The Story of Christmas, which is based on The International Children’s Bible and taken from Ellis’s Read and Share Bible, tells the Christmas story in simple language that is easy to comprehend and is geared for children ages 4-7. It could be read to even younger children than that in my opinion. Each two-page story summarizes biblical accounts of the events surrounding the Christmas story and includes a discussion question. In the “Can You Retell the Story?” pages featured at the book’s conclusion, children are asked to point to the pictures in order and retell the story in their own words. The illustrations are friendly, colorful, and cartoonish. I thought that the bulbous, Jimmy Durante-like noses on all the characters detracted from the pictures, but neither of my daughters, ages 4 and 8, minded!
We have a holiday book basket in December each year, and I have a collection of new and used Christmas- and winter-themed books that I wrap; the kids unwrap one book each every day in the days leading up to Christmas. This book will be a wonderful addition to our book basket, and it especially appeals to my younger daughter. While watching the DVD in another room, she excitedly came running in to tell me to come and watch baby Jesus with her.
The cover price for The Story of Christmas is $10.99, but Thomas Nelson lists it at $7.99. You can find the book and DVD set at many major book outlets in time for Christmas gift giving or to share with your own children. Thank you to Thomas Nelson for providing a copy of this book to our family for review! Visit Mama Buzz to see other reviews of this product.
National collection week for Operation Christmas Child is next week, November 16–23. Visit the Samaritan’s Purse web site to learn more about Operation Christmas Child, find out how to pack a shoe box, and locate your nearest local collection site. If you make your donation online instead of enclosing a check in your shoe box, you can track your shoe box to its destination country!
In the video below, Mummy Deals shares 10 tips for packing a shoebox frugally for Operation Christmas Child. By shopping for items throughout the year and taking advantage of sales, freebies, and rebates, she was able to pack 45 shoe boxes for $45 this year! You won’t be able to take advantage of some of the tips if you’re still packing this year’s box, but she gives some great ideas for making your dollar stretch further, allowing you to pack boxes for more children.
Karen at 33 for a Moment also offers helpful tips in her post Operation Christmas Child: Shoe Boxes on a Shoestring.
Boxes for Katje is a lovely children’s book that would be great to read and talk about with your kids while you’re working on a shoe box. I shared other ideas for teaching children about poverty and compassion in my post Teaching Kids About Poverty.
Take a look at these helpful resources for helping your student (or yourself!) with grammar and language mechanics.
Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl, has just released a follow-up to her successful book Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing. The Grammar Devotional: Daily Tips for Successful Writing from Grammar Girl features 365 language lessons, including quizzes, writing tips, memory tricks, and puzzles. I haven’t read it yet, but it looks like a great addition to my collection of style guides and writing books. Read a week’s worth of sample lessons from The Grammar Devotional here, download the first 4 weeks of lessons here, and check out 10 Common Grammar Girl Questions.
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If signs and online forum posts are any indication, apostrophes confuse many people. They aren’t difficult to use correctly if you’re familiar with the rules for their use, but some people seem genuinely afraid of simply adding an S to form a plural! How to Use an Apostrophe playfully explains when to use an apostrophe and when not to use one.
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The OWL (Online Writing Lab) at Purdue provides an excellent collection of writing instruction materials, including tips on mechanics and grammar. You can also find exercises to help students apply what they’ve learned.
