First 'snow' of winter.  The Boy was delighted.

Panda Girl meets Father Christmas.

 Shooting out the front door to collect my girls from various gym and dance lessons I almost dropped The Boy.  But you never do drop your own baby, do you?  So I caught him and tore my ankle ligaments instead.  I'm on crutches and the Boy has had issues with his asthma this week, so unfortunately some of our Advent projects have not happened.  Ballet Girl supervised a mince pie making session yesterday while Monkey Girl played at a friend's house, and they made more mince pies today with my lovely sister.  

 Candlelit Christmas carols at our local church

Today we went to our awesome Forest Centre and made Christmas Wreaths with willow.  The Boy enjoyed snipping all the ribbons into tiny pieces and one of the helpers commented "I see he still loves cutting everything in sight".  Yep!

:)

Panda Girl had an Under-the-Sea Party for her 6th Birthday.  It was a few months in the planning and a few hours in the making but it was a labour of love and she/we had fun :)

Today:  Dentist's first thing and then some good school work (Maths, Science, Handwriting, English & Music History) followed by a bit of Christmas craft :)

 The Boy loves cooking and stirring things for me while I'm in the kitchen. This evening I let him make his very first cake and he was delighted to learn that this wasn't just a bit of fun with flour but was actually going in the oven.  He did a smashing job :)

Our 'thank you' tree...

...snowflake beading and pipe-cleaners...

I love this one: from DLTK I printed out the camel and King shape and we cut out the inside shape to create a 'hole'.  The black is sticky back plastic which the girls then used to stick on their design.

I asked the girls to use black left over card shapes to make a Nativity Scene.  It got them thinking... This is Panda Girl's version.

I made the girls a snowy scene and gave them 200 foam snow stickers.  Silence!

The girls sewed themselves some decorations.

We celebrated St. Nicholas' Day with friends.  St. Nicholas put in an appearance too :)

A Winter Walk

The Boy's Playgroup held a Christmas Service.  Monkey Girl was a willing Mary....

...The Boy was a less willing shepherd.

We started Advent today by setting up our empty wooden crib.  At the bottom we placed a piece of gold card which represented our promise to try hard to be good for Advent.  The girls each decided what they were going to try particularly hard on (sharing more, no jealousy, more patience etc), then each time they do a good deed they get to put a cotton wool ball in the crib.  Hopefully by Christmas it will be FULL of cotton wool and soft and comfortable ready for the Baby Jesus :)

Then we set about crafting.  We made scratch card decorations...

...pine-cone Christmas trees...

...Christmas cards...

...hand and footprint reindeer...

...and Christmas lanterns.

The Georgians. 

This time we focused a lot more on England's place in world history, e.g. how our tea taxes triggered the American Revolution.  Panda Girl did more craft related things (flags etc) while Ballet Girl and Monkey Girl began learning how to extract information from sources.  We also learnt how to identify Georgian houses and looked at the progression of fashion and Parliament.

We finished this project early in order to focus on Advent but plan to return to it after our trip to France in the New Year.  My plans are that we will look at Napoleon's rise and fall, move onto the Regency period and then William IV and the end of the Slave Trade.

Georgian worksheets - we worked on Bonnie Prince Charlie, the American War of Independence and the French Revolution. 

 Georgian wig making shop.  This caused a little hilarity: