A Great Day!

Yay for today! Well, maybe I shouldn't be so excited as we still haven't done all that I want to accomplish. But I am feeling so good about getting stuff done! I even did an extra load of laundry! The weather has been dreary and rainy...so much that the whole house woke up today at around 9am!! This meant a late start to our schedule; but it all worked out well and we were able to enjoy doing our morning lessons in our pajamas.

Of course, my day also went well because DH had the morning off again today. It was fun to have the whole family together for breakfast. It was also a great opportunity to catch a little Christmas family tradition on camera. As you all may remember from a previous post, we usually do something special for each Sunday of Advent. Last Sunday, we all worked on a gingerbread house. Since then, my DH has been encouraging the kids to take a piece of candy from the house every morning. This is hilarious to them because they think that their dad is letting them do something naughty and they try and hide it from me! What they don't know is that I take a little piece of candy every now and then too!!

Well, today started the gingerbread house demolition. So now every morning until Christmas, they get to take a bite from the actual gingerbread house. My DH thinks this is the neatest way to start the day, and I can't help but to love him even more for being such a fun guy. So if you think that these little gingerbread creations have to go into the trash after being on display, you can always let your kids munch away. Of course, I can't promise that the actual taste of it will be good...but from these pictures, it's obvious that kids might eat just about anything!!!

Isabella taking a big bite.

Anthony munching on the roof.

Marco getting in on the action.

Our gingerbread house looking a bit bitten!!!

As for our school lessons today, they went well!!! We started the day with BFIAR. I can't say enough how much Anthony is loving this program. The books are all becoming fast favorites with him. We continued working on some lapbook activities from Homeschool Share and I found some other cute add-ins as well. Since Ask Mr. Bear's characters are all found in a farm, it has been easy to tie it in with farm related crafts.

The kids loved the "Walk Like the Animals" activity from the lapbook. They were all galloping, trotting, skipping, and hopping all over the place! But the real favorite was making paper bag puppets. I found some cute print-outs from ABCTeach.com and I printed one out for each animal in the book. The kids colored, cut, and glued them together. Tomorrow they will be putting on a puppet theatre production of the book. It was really fun to see them going through the book together and getting the lines straight for each animal!

The kids showing off some of their puppets.

Anthony with his goat puppet.

Among some of the other preschool activities we did were singing "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" using our puppets, as well as completing a couple of farm animal worksheets also from ABCTeach.com. Most of the materials that I get from ABCTeach.com are for members only, but they still have so much available for free. It's worth a look!

As for Marco and Isabella, they had lots of fun working with Anthony during his own school time. They are a great help and they always encourage him to color in the lines, to cut straight, etc. Many times if Anthony gets frustrated with something, they are the first to offer help. They both are really a blessing to me!!! I can't even complain about their own school work today, as they both got their work done without any complaints. It really was a great day!

Friday's are usually a slow school day, since I have our babysitter come out in the morning to watch the kids while I do errands. But I still have a full afternoon planned out for the kids. I'm hoping is goes as well as today.