Our Holiday Season

We have been involved in the French Story Time at our local library. The teacher is amazing and the kids have learned so much. Here is a song they sang infront of a bunch of parents for Christmas. Austyn has taken an interest in singing and was asked to sing a part of the song solo.

 We really never stop homeschooling. Our life is full of learning and educational activities. We learned about Christmas past, other religious holidays, watched movies, made crafts and much more. The kids made these pictures to give as gifts. Austyn ended up liking his too much to give away, but I thought that the concept was creative. I didn't give them the idea to do these pictures this way. They did this on their own. Zoe's is the one covered in tape. She still really enjoys using tape over glue.

 We have been visiting family more since we've been here in Ontario. My mother got a few visits from us. We can't paint in the house we are in, easily so we go to her house to paint and do other crafts. The kids got to choose things around the house to give to people. These two boxes are gifts they chose for eachother.

 What did we do with our Christmas crafts? We decorated Grandma's tree!

 We are still living with relatives, but this didn't mean we stopped some of our own traditions. We made cookies for Santa on Christmas Eve. This always includes a great deal of joking around.

 We took the time to write Santa letters and then we also did a letter to keep with the cookies. Zoe did the top part and Austyn did the bottom.

 One of the most memorable gifts that they got first thing on Christmas morning was the Bell off of Santa's Sleigh. Austyn had the great idea of asking Santa for this on his letter because we read about how the little boy got a bell in the book Polar Express.

Above are a couple of the surprised looks they had opening gifts Christmas morning. Nanny, Papa, and Grandpa were all there.

We went to more relatives for supper.

 Zoe enjoyed doing make-up and hair.


Austyn enjoyed singing to everyone.

On Boxing Day we saw more family. This is the first time that everyone was together (except one person) in many years. It was nice.

Christmas at the Museum

I'm getting a bit behind in posting. Things have been getting a bit busy here.

We went to a Christmas at the museum field trip put on by someone on one of the local homeschool groups.

 We could only stay for half of it because we made other commitments for the afternoon. We chose to do the indoor section since we forgot to bring mittens for the outdoor part. We went around the world and learned about holiday celabrations in different countries.

There were stations set up with different crafts, reading and games to show examples of things that are different from place to place.

Decorating the Tree

 We have started to get ready for Christmas. We are a bit late this year.

 It  seems a bit strange having Christmas in someone else's house, but I think it'll be fine.

 We gave our tree away when we moved back to Ontario because it wouldn't fit in the trailer. This isn't our tree, but we are using our decorations.

 Putting the decorations on the tree wouldn't be complete without a bunny ear picture.

Have a happy holiday season!

First Holiday Craft

I remembered doing this craft at a Homeschool Co-Op a couple of years ago and decided to pull it up on the iPad and do it with the kids. We are a bit limited because we don't know where many of our craft supplies are, but this craft just requires, paper, scissors, a stapler, and tape.

Mine is on the left. I followed the directions exactly. Zoe did the one on the right. I'm so proud of her because she did it all by herself except for the stapling. Austyn's is in the middle. I helped him a great deal. The cool thing about Austyn's is that his has more ribbons cut and a bigger center, on each arm of the snowflake. It looks different than ours and turned out amazing.

HERE is the link to make them yourself.

GloDOODLE

Zoe is enjoying her second favourite Christmas gift. Her first is her make-up. This is the GloDOODLE.  She plays with it in bed before she goes to sleep.

The light can have different colour settings. She writes me messages on it and pictures.

Our Christmas

 

The kids woke up at 3AM to open gifts and instead of listen to them not sleep we all got up to open gifts. After we did that we went back to bed until relatives started to call us to wish us a good day.  

Here is Zoe showing off a new dress and her new make-up.

We spent the rest of the day relaxing and getting our supper ready. We had turkey, cheese potatoes in the crock pot and corn. Supper was early so we could eat with our family back in Ontario on SKYPE. Eating with them virtually was almost as good as really being there and we played a game until some of them had to leave to return to their homes.

Our Christmas Eve

 

On Christmas Eve we made cookies. Here we are making shortbread cookies and got a bit carried away with the powdered sugar. 

Here they are baking. These cookies have some dried cranberries on top.

Daddy made Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies because that is Santa's favourite, of course.

Here they are on the cooling rack.

For supper I made Minestrone Soup in the crock pot.

They wrapped gifts that they picked out. I love how they did printed on their tags and just had to get a picture.

The kids made pictures for Santa and put out cookies and milk with carrots for the reindeer.

We usually all open one small gift on Christmas Eve but this year just the kids opened one.

Merry Christmas!

Handy Crafts Before Christmas

Here are some crafts we worked on this week. It was my first attempt at beeding. I'm making a snake bookmark for Austyn. Zoe made the dog (well she started it and I finished it for her) and it's orange on the otherside (we worked with what pieces of felt we could find). Austyn made the bird almost completely by himself and he started beeding himself a bracelet. We threw out all of the recycled stuffing we had before we moved here to save space so we stuffed the bird and the dog with dried rice. Austyn put a large bead in the birds head for a brain.

The three of us spent some bonding time while we worked away at our crafts and chatted. It was nice.

My Silly Kids say Happy Holidays!

We haven't done much this year for the Holidays, but we still had fun. Moving across the country and selling a house tend to get in the way of any homeschool plans but we still found many fun educational things to do each day.This is a game called Guess What I am. You put your face in an unknown board and you ask yes or no questions to figure out what you are. We took this a step farther and made it a fun drama moment where the kids chose the animals they wanted to be and they made the faces or acted out the character. We had so much fun! This is what I hope for everyone during the Holidays. It is our hope that you have fun this season! Happy Holidays!

West Edmonton Mall

We went to West Edmonon Mall and got our picture taken with Santa. If you don't know anything about this mall, it was the largest mall in the world for many years. It's huge!

Galaxyland is located here. It's a huge indoor amusment park. There are rides and games for all ages.

It's amazing to see the roller coasters that they were able to fit in this mall. This picture only shows a small portion of Galaxyland.

We purchased a pass to a four story kids play area. There was a cave, slides and all kinds of fun places to explore for the kids. This was the area we used the most. With our pass we could return as many times as we wanted until 9PM. Before we left the mall we went on a few rides. Here Austyn and Daddy are on the swing ride.

There are other attractions. To the left is an underground aquarium and a live seal show that plays twice a day. The the right at the back is a replica of the Santa Marie Ship. To the bottom there are some bumper boats that squirt water. We rode them and got all wet. It was fun. Beside the Santa Maria there are remote control boats. Behind it there is a big movie theatre with a fire breathing dragon. The dragon was broken on this trip so Austyn was a bit bummed to not see it breath fire.

This is a picture of the seal show. We watched part of it from a distance.

This is the skating rink. There is also a large indoor water park.

The mall is so big it has more than one food court. It has a section with all kinds of popular restaurants. There is a famous themed hotel attached. This is part of the mall that looks like old buildings.

Some of the stores we were not use to seeing in malls. I don't even know how many tatoo parlours we passed walking through and that was only on one level.