12 Days of Christmas

Sophie & Lily’s 12 Days of Christmas 2011

On the first day of Christmas the girls made for you:

One beautiful painting for Caca and Travis.

Caca opening up her present

The beautiful christmas Tree Ornament painting by Sophie

On the second day of Christmas the girls made for you:

Two super-cool bean paintings for Eloise & Emma!

EMMA' bean painting by Sophie

ELOISE's bean painting by Lily

On the third day of Christmas the girls made for you:

Three American Girls outfits for Hannah, Olivia, and Danielle (plus one for Lily too!)

Repurposed American Girl doll clothes made from old clothes by Sophie & Gamma

Lily made all the ponchos to match the outfits!

On the fourth day of Christmas the girls made for you:

 

Four Painted and feathered masks for Caca, Gamma & Bo, and Owyn!

On the Fifth day of Christmas the girls made for you:

Five times 2 glittery snow-globes~for a lot of people, we made 10!

We made the snowglobes at the farm with Gamma--she got mostof the old Ball jars at an estate sale

We got the snowglobe ornaments all from Goodwill--the most expensive one was $1.99

On the sixth day of Christmas the girls made for you:

Six Sophie-designed T-shirts for A,B, & C, Lauren, Emma, and friend Lily!

On the seventh day of Christmas the girls made for you:

Seven more Muppet-monster letters for Ben, Gpa, Gma, & Dad

The Muppet-Monster letters were super fun and super cute!! 

On the eighth day of Christmas the girls made for you:

Eight handmade scrapbooks for aunts, uncles, grands, and friends!

The Girls each made 4 scrapbooks each: Sophie made ones for Halliday & Owyn, one for Emma, one for Uncle Aaron, and another for Gpa DC & Gma Gayle. Lily made hers for Gpa Mike & Gma Linda, Uncle Araron, Aunt Kim & Uncle Paul, and Uncle Eric & Aunt Lyn

On the ninth day of Christmas the girls made for you:

Well, we made a lot of stuff too for people!

Sophie did this cool gold=leaf Owl engraving for Gamma and created a wonderful frame.

Lily made this awesoem collage for Gamma and Bo!

Lily painted these cat and dog bobble heads for Halliday because he likes cats & dogs

On the tenth day of Christmas the girls made for you:

Ten other special people got ornaments and presents too!

Busy dining room table for the month of December!

Sophie paitned a beautiful Skate frame for Coach Linda

The girls made all these ornaments for friends and neighbors--a lot of glitter!

On the eleventh day of Christmas the girls made for you:

Eleven different batches of yummy holiday cookies—and we did some math!

On the twelfth day of Christmas the girls made for you:

Twelve busy homeschool days full of love and creation!

Merry Christmas to all our family & friends~

December 6, 2011 @ Doctor’s Office: “Why do we make Christmas?”

1.       People appreciate gifts more—Sophie

2.       Better than buying stuff—hard to find things at the store—Lily

3.       A lot more fun than shopping—Sophie

4.       I like to make things—Lily

5.       It’s resourceful—Sophie

6.       People like the stuff you make and they’re proud of you—Lily

7.       The gifts are “unique” (new word)—Lily

8.       People like them more because they know you made the gift especially for them and took time to make it and think about that person—Sophie

I reflect on the lessons Sophie and Lily learned for our second year of “Christmas School:”

·         Create your own warmth. The house was full of baking and glue and glitter and music for the month of December, reminding us that the long, cold winter stuck inside can be an opportunity to create our own beauty and warmth.

·         Plan & Schedule when you have a long list to accomplish in a short time. Each gift was carefully considered and planned. On the first day of Christmas school we make our list and go through the craft closet and begin to decide what we’re going to make for whom. Then we look at the calendar and make a schedule to insure all the gifts are made in time to be given out or shipped. We did pretty well and only have five gifts left to be handed out.

·         Having stimulation like holiday music and movies can help motivate creation.  It was funny some days when I had to really push the girls to work on their gifts. Even “fun” school can end up feeling tedious sometimes. But I would play the Christmas mix or put on a movie and that always helped to get us back into the holiday spirit!

·         It feels great to cross things off a long list! This is more my lesson than the girls and one I take great pleasure in~ I also really enjoyed cleaning, organizing, wrapping, and putting away finished gifts and their materials. My dining room table was full of supplies and all kinds of mid-made projects and especially the last week and a half before Christmas, it was exhilarating to start and finish a long list every day and slowly clean and recover my dining room table well before the first holiday dinner.

·         Take your time girls. This was one of the most repeated mantras of Christmas school and the girls really learned this lesson by the end of the month. There were a couple of mistakes that needed Mom’s attention to fix and a stern reminder that if you take your time—especially with glue and painting—the gift will look better in the end and you will feel more proud of it. There’s no point in rushing through a creative project just for the sake a finishing it and there were a couple of times that we’d start a project and realize that one or both of the girls weren’t really into doing that particular craft at that time. So instead of making art feel like work, we just switched gears and worked on something else that they were interested in making. This tactic also worked when they were painting and gluing and had to wait in between applications for things to dry—this was a really important and successful lesson and the finished gifts show the result!

·         Know when to give up, recalculate, and rethink a project that just isn’t working! This was a good lesson for all of us and one we learned without a lot of drama or upset. There were just a few planned projects on our original list that just weren’t working either because of time, interest, or that once we started we just didn’t like the outcome. Both girls made some readjustments mid-month and I was really proud of their attitude.

·         Learning about all the important holidays at this time of year and how and why they’re celebrated is fun! Sophie definitely worked hard school-wise this month too and she finished really good 6 x 6’s and some book reports and well-written blogs about how Christmas is celebrated around the world and the country, about the Christian Nativity story, Hanukah, and the Solstice. I was proud of the work she accomplished this month!

·         Spending time with family and enjoying holiday theater and music productions helps make the holiday season special. As a family we spent a lot of time in the theater this Christmas season. Thanks to Jean (and Andy) we saw the amazing, spectacular Rockettes in Boston, we enjoyed two showing of the Theater Project’s Miracles on School Street, we saw Sophie’s friend Emma as the Ghost of Christmas Past in A Christmas Carol, we enjoyed the lively Portland Symphony’s concert, we joined Al Miller in his telling of the winter story The Mitten and then listened to him recite A Child’s Christmas in Wales, and we enjoyed Sophie’s tap dance performance of Route 66 with her new dance teacher, and we can’t forget the annual Skating Club of Brunswick’s Holiday Exhibition where Sophie skated a beautiful solo and Lily and Eloise were adorable reindeer! Wow. We did and saw a lot!

·         Giving really does feel better than to receive (or at least just as good!) The girls again really enjoyed giving all their gifts and watching their loved ones open them and gush with awe and appreciation. I was really proud of all our Christmas gifts (given and received this year) because they were mostly all handmade and the ones that were purchased were thoughtful, creative, inspiring, and, except for Sophie’s gift from Santa (a Kindle Fire), NOT ONE PRESENT NEEDS BATTERIES OR PLUGGED IN! and I will happily excuse Santa because the Kindle is really cool and is important for school.

Thank you to all our friends and family who spent the holiday with us. The love and support and friendship we are blessed with this year especially filled our season with kindness and laughter and good food. The girls and I really enjoy “making Christmas” and sharing it all with you.

We also celebrate almost 100 days of sixth grade homeschool and I can’t say I am looking forward to next month or the next three months after that, I am looking forward to getting into the nineteenth century with Sophie with the War of 1812, the Cherokee Trail of Tears, Westward Expansion and Pioneers.  For Science we’ll be working on Weather and will keep a weather log and hopefully meet and visit one of the local meteorologists. Sophie has two new math books to work from—one which will really challenge her and the other is more of a basic workbook. Since we’re not planning any major “project” for this unit—just a lot of web quests, reading, and 6 x 6s, I have put out a basket full of neat books, games, videos, and stuff that she will pick two on “Basket Days.” Subjects in the basket include: Latin workbook, Spanish to English flashcards, Brain Quest cards, Daring Book for Girls, Landmark and Presidents flashcards, Math card games and a book about Math tricks, BBC’s Planet Earth DVDs, National Geographic magazines and maps, books on hieroglyphics and a bunch of short informative science books. My plan is for her to pick two and give me about a half hour to come up with an activity for the day. Should be fun and different!

We will end the year with the Civil War, Maine Studies, and Geology.