Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was filled with sorrow at the tragic death of his wife in a fire in 1861. The Civil War broke out the same year, and it seemed this was an additional punishment. Two years later, Longfellow was again saddened to learn that his own son had been seriously wounded in the Army of the Potomac.

Sitting down to his desk, one Christmas Day, he heard the church bells ringing. It was in this setting that Longfellow wrote these lines:

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men!

Till, ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men."

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep.
"God is not dead, nor doth he sleep!
The wrong shall fail,
The right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to men!"

"It might be easy to run away to a monastery, away from the commercialization, the hectic hustle, the demanding family responsibilities of Christmas-time. Then we would have a holy Christmas. But we would forget the lesson of the Incarnation, of the enfleshing of God—the lesson that we who are followers of Jesus do not run from the secular; rather we try to transform it. It is our mission to make holy the secular aspects of Christmas just as the early Christians baptized the Christmas tree. And we do this by being holy people—kind, patient, generous, loving, laughing people—no matter how maddening is the Christmas rush…"
Fr. Andrew Greeley

HAPPY ADVENT :)

For all you Catholic Mummies (and Papas) I have uploaded a few photos of the Faith side of our day. I am hoping to buy a small table where I can permanently leave the girls religious books but, for this week at least, they are out in the living room for the girls to enjoy.

Before we begin work we say a prayer to St Joseph and read today's blessing. I have also started to read a page a day about Guardian Angels.

Our Sacred Heart Statue, minus any flowers (hint hint my lovely husband :)

I am hoping to find a good statue of Our Lady - any ideas anyone...?

The mantlepiece in the girls bedroom where we pray our evening decade. Elodie loves the picture of Our Lady surrounded by the Angels. We also have a relic from Fatima by Lucia's bed which we were 'loaned' for Lucia's operation and until she makes a full recovery.

This is in the girls bedroom - I change the picture regularly - it has some lovely images on it.

Elodie and her friend, both missing the same tooth :)

The girls had some friends over today for some craft activities.

They made bead bracelets and...

...sparkly angels.

'ch' window display.

This was a fun, short project. The girls did some good work, Elodie especially, who is more interested in words than Lucia is. Elodie made a lovely little 'ch' word book as well as all the other bits and pieces shown below.

Dominique was evidently perplexed when her USA themed horses and wagon, which she had played with on a daily basis on the window sill display during the previous project, were replaced with chalk, chickens, chess pieces and a miniature chest of drawers, but she played with it all the same :)

Chinese flags, Chilean flags and chimes

As promised we made a chocolate treat today. The girls don't often eat chocolate or many sweet things- I am a fussy Mummy - so with last week's chocolate log cabin as well they were very chuffed :)

Dom was delighted to be given the task of licking the chocolatey spoon :)

Mixing melted chocolate and rice crispies

Chocolate rice crispy cakes :)

Today Elodie helped me to rake up the leaves from our fig tree and sweep the tiles by the front door, while Lucia ran around madly with the dog.

Gymnastics at 2.15 for an hour and another quick run with the dog before it gets dark. Lucia is sad when the sun sets but is coming round to the idea that we need to let the sun go to Australia to help their flowers grow :)

Elodie has some new 'ch' flashcards which she is learning. I also gave her the task of spelling out the words with these plastic letters.

New 'ch' words which we talked about today were cheetah, Chile, China, Chad, chimpanzee, chipmunk and chestnut. They are looking forward to the chocolate aspect of 'ch' which I have promised them tomorrow!

Elodie did really well today piecing the jigsaw 'ch' words and pictures together. She coloured them in and then we stuck them together properly with sticky tape on the back.

Dom wore her chipmunk jumper especially for our 'ch' project

Lucia and I set up the train track 'choo choo'

Today was the first day of our new project - the sound 'ch'.

I set up the display last night with various pictures or objects beginning with 'ch' including: chimney, chairs, cherries, chips, cheese, chalk, chest of drawers, chickens, children and chess.

My online shop arrived and the girls had a cherry smoothie while they worked. Lucia played with the chess board and then we made...

...pom pom chicks...

...cheeping chicks and chickens...

...chalk pictures...

...and cheese pizzas for lunch

Say 'cheese'!

USA window display

Some American history role play toys

A bit of Disney Magic

Our Thanksgiving Tree (thank you Meredith :) ). We wrote on each leaf something that we were thankful for. Lucia was especially grateful for the sun and Elodie for our dog, Fendo.

The girls enjoyed looking at this book. They learnt all about chaps and saddles and cowboy hats - great photos.

For a small look at the Mississippi River and its big impact on life for some people

I created a mini workbook on consonants at the end of a word. The girls sounded out each word and circled, ticked or wrote down the sound they heard at the end.

Elodie also wrote the all the numbers from 1 - 100 in a chart - the first time she has written them all down and she was very chuffed :)

I gave Lucia a worksheet with letters on and she had to circle all the ones she knew. Her favourite thing to draw is a circle so she ended up circling them all and then circling the circles and then circling the circles of the circles. It was all very circular and she was chuckling by the end :)

Today we did various pieces of work on alphabet sequencing. We made LONG alphabet caterpillars.

Capitals - an alphabet turkey, just right for our Thanksgiving week.

This afternoon the girls had some friends over for a craft hour. They made...

...spider boxes...

...flags...

...and stamp pictures

Two months or so ago, for several reasons, Elodie became quite reluctant to pursue her reading. She was progressing nicely but everything became too overwhelming and the barriers went up. I thought a good deal about how I could tackle the problem and decided, considering her character, to let it drop completely for a while and allow her to pursue other avenues. We kept up with her flash cards and individual words but let the books sit on the shelf for a while without her actually realising I had made this decision. This continued for about 6 weeks.

I kept the very first Primary Phonics book she completed last year on her desk and, as off-hand as I could manage, told her she could read it on her own when she was ready. One night she asked if she could read it to Dominique as a bedtime story which she did and which Dominique thought was great :) She then asked for the first 4 books in her bed and told me the next day that she had read them all to her teddies for which she got a big hug :)

For the past week she has seemed ready to be able to tackle the books again so at lunch time today I popped book 8 in front of her and told her to read me the first sentence after she had finished her mouthful. She nodded vigorously at me and chewed away looking at the page. She finished and read the first 3 sentences, so beautifully that I grinned! It was great and she was so pleased with herself.

She is also enjoying working out how to write words - i.e. she wrote mud. She wrote book as 'bk' - very interesting as (for our Bedfordshire UK accent) it is phonetically correct! All in all she's doing well and by the end of the book at lunchtime today we were both grinning :)

I let the girls choose their own work during quiet time. Elodie chose to sew beads and make me a necklace and Lucia decided to make Easter egg jigsaws.

Elodie's turn to deseed some lupin pods and plant them in her flowerpot. Lucia working on her letters.

The girlies making chocolate finger log cabins for our Pioneer theme, part of our USA project

Elodie and Lucia's chocolate finger pioneer log cabins, complete with marzipan pioneer figures

Dominique's beautiful attempt. She's so wonderful :)

Elodie and Lucia made lollipop stick pioneer log cabins this morning. A little too brightly coloured perhaps but they had fun all the same. A nice way to start the day.

Playing fun games with their lollipop stick cabins and various creatures.

I made a pilgrim bonnet for the girls to wear. Elodie wore it for most of the morning.

Elodie showing me the washing line which she assembled as part of our pioneer-living role play.

Lucia planted some lupin seeds a couple of weeks ago. They are growing beautifully and she is very proud.

Lucia's lupin and her cactus which Nanny Mo gave her for her 4th Birthday, both growing nicely on her desk.