Winter Verses and Blessings

As I work my way through my massive to-do list, one of the things I wanted to do was find the verses we'll be using in our daily routines during the next month or so.

Morning Verse
Good morning, dear earth.
Good morning, dear sun.
Good morning, dear rocks,
And the flowers, every one.
Good morning, dear beasts,
And the birds in the trees.
Good morning to you,
And good morning to me.

Good morning, dear frost,
On my window so dear.
Good morning, dear snow-
I’m so glad that you’re here!
Good morning, dear ice,
And dear wind rushing free.
Good morning to you, and good morning to me!
First verse is traditional; second verse is written by me for Seasons of Joy Winter Activity Guide

Mealtime Blessings
Blessings on the food we eat.
Blessings on the friends we meet.
Help us never to forget –
Gentleness, kindness and respect.
Traditional

Lord, bless our meal
and as you satisfy our needs,
make us mindful of the needs of others.
Traditional

Tidying Verse
I'm a tiny little clean up elf,
And I clean and I tidy in spite of myself.
I just can't help it! You can see from my face
When I see something out, I must put it in its place!
Written by Me

A Bedtime Verse
Dream with me,
Dream with me,
Cuddle up asleep.
Bedtime is a magical time--
Dream with me asleep.
Source unknown

A Bedtime Blessing
May God grant you always...
A sunbeam to warm you,
A moonbeam to charm you,
A sheltering angel, so nothing can harm you.

Source unknown

I found a wonderful video on You Tube that shows more verses and gives you tunes for many of them.

January Plans and Projects

Bare branches of each tree
on this chilly January morn
look so cold so forlorn.
Gray skies dip ever so low
left from yesterday's dusting of snow.
Yet in the heart of each tree
waiting for each who wait to see
new life as warm sun and breeze will blow,
like magic, unlock springs sap to flow,
buds, new leaves, then blooms will grow.
- Nelda Hartmann, January Morn

I've always loved the monthly plans and themes over at By Sun and Candlelight, and one of my new year's goals is to find a way to make this work in my own life. Mostly, I'll be jotting down my ideas for homeschooling, but of course, it's impossible to segment out our homeschooling life from the rest of our lives-- it's one of the things I love best about homeschooling!

January is named after Janus, the two-faced god, the god of doorways and choices. It's the "month of the heart of winter," a sentiment that rings very true here in the heart of Pennsylvania,

Faith, Feast Days and Festivals
The entire month of January is devoted to the Holy Name of Jesus. For devotions, I'd like to look at the different names of Jesus with the children.

January 1 is both the Solemnity of Mary and the World Day of Peace. It's also New Year's Day, of course! The perfect day to update calendars and birthday lists.
January 3: Holy Name of Jesus
January 4: St. Elizabeth Ann Seton (one of my favorites)
January 6: Epiphany. We'll celebrate with a Kings' Cake!
January 10: Baptism of Our Lord, and a chance to remember our own baptisms.
January 11: Nicholas's Baptismal Anniversary
January 24: Our Lady of Peace

Hearth and Home
We've challenged ourselves to cook our way through John McCutcheon's song "Soup", from his Wintersongs album.

I'm also going to continue with our pantry challenge. My other goal this month, foodwise, is to start making our own pizza for pizza night instead of buying frozen pizzas. We should be able to find lots of fresh broccoli and cauliflower, lemons and oranges to munch on.

We'll celebrate Christmas through the 12 days, right up to Epiphany when the Three Kings leave one last gift for the children. Then we'll take down the tree, strip down the decorations, and pack up the ornaments. I'm really helping to cull through some of them this year before we put them away. Then we'll change the mantle from a Christmas theme to one featuring snowflakes and icicles. Since it's inevitable, we may as well celebrate it!

I'm hoping to do a minor update in the bathroom. Six people in one bathroom means we need to do some planning, and I have some ideas to help make it work. I'll also be doing a fair bit of decluttering in the children's rooms.

We'll order some seed catalogs and start dreaming of our summer garden. We're also aiming to get our tax return in early this year.

Homeschooling
Nicholas: We'll be working on recognizing letters L, M, and N as well as making sure he knows all his shapes. I'm also thinking of starting with some very basic reading readiness skills-- understanding beginning, middle, and end and listening for sounds at the beginning, middle, and end of words. We'll continue on with fingerknitting, wet-on-wet watercolor painting, beeswax modeling, and coloring. We've started some very beginner form drawing as well.

Katie Grace: My planned main lesson for Katie Grace this month is the life of Jesus. Additionally, we'll work on some geometry concepts and making sure she really has her basic math facts under her belt. We'll work some more on knitting and painting as well.

Michael: Michael starts his botany unit this month and will also be focusing on geometry. He's enjoying Life of Fred: Decimals and Percents, and will continue to work through that independently. We'll continue learning about verbs and tenses as well.

Field Trips and Outings: I don't imagine we'll be out and about too much this month-- it's cold and miserable and co-op doesn't start up again until February. But hopefully, we'll be able to get in at least one snow walk and a chance to go sledding. There's also a performance of Strega Nona at the Community Art Center this month.

Art and Music: Katie Grace will carry on with violin and Michael with cello. Both will (hopefully) start piano lessons this month as well. All three are in choir and will be singing Epiphany songs. We'll also be listening to Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition.

For art, we'll be looking at works by Albrecht Durer ("The Young Hare"), Marc Chagall ("I and the Village") and Georgia O' Keefe ("Rancho Church"). There's really no rhyme or reason to it; we're working our way slowly through a book called Masterpiece of the Month.



Story of the World: This month, we're really going to take some time to focus on the American Revolution. My mother-in-law got us a great book for Christmas called The American Revolution for Kids.

Stories and Circles and Signs of the Season
We'll definitely be telling the story The Mitten. There are so many neat ways to extend the story, and some beautiful picture books out there as well. From there, we'll move on to The Elves and the Shoemaker.

For read aloud, we need to wrap up The Silver Chair and then we'll be moving on to The Boxcar Children, a classic I've read for each of my children. Now it's Nicholas's turn!

For circle, we'll go on a Winter Movement Journey from Winter Seasons of Joy. We'll probably weave that circle for two weeks and then move on to a winter trip to the woods to see what animals and other creatures live there.

Our January nature table will feature many of the animals from our stories and circle time, and I wouldn't be surprised if Jack Frost makes an appearance there as well.

Things to Make and Do

Well, paper snowflakes, of course! And sewing some itty bitty felt animals for the nature table. Maybe I'll finally get brave enough to needle felt some as well.

As a family, we'll try our hand at some puppetry. We have a lovely shadow puppet kit hiding downstairs somewhere, and I've been wanting to make a doorway puppet stage for a while now.

I'm also planning to get out my sewing machine, go through all the fabric I've been stashing, and actually making something. I'm not sure what-- pants for the little boys? a jumper for Katie Grace? We shall see.

I don't have a wall/schoolroom calendar yet, and I may just have to make one if I can't find one that suits.

We'll be updating our healing basket as well, seeing what we need to replenish or replace.

So what do you have planned in January?

Merry Christmas!

We've been busy celebrating Christmas together as a family, but will hopefully be back to blogging on Monday. Wishing you a blessed and peaceful Christmas!

Last night was not a silent night.

You see, I had intended to post these pictures showing our preparations for a Christmas Eve gingerbread house-making party with good friends.


Instead, what I got was two vomiting boys.

Blessedly, it was a fairly fast moving flu-- the vomiting was pretty much over within 10 hours.Still, it left two exhausted parents, two sleepy children, and a whole boatload of laundry in its wake.

Still, it was a holy night. Praying with a sick little boy who later was able to say "Jesus helped me get better!", singing Christmas carols as lullabies, telling the story of Christ's birth as Daniel dozed off to sleep, we were able to find blessings even in the illness.

And today, we even managed to make our gingerbread houses, even though we had to cancel the party. The little boys didn't last long, though, and went back to lie down on the couch.


We dressed up

and made it to church and sang and worshipped.


And came home to open Christmas pajamas, have cocoa and cookies, and hang up stockings.

And so, I wish you a very merry Christmas-- may you find blessings in unexpected places!

The fourth light of Advent is the light of humankind--
The light of hope that we may learn to love and understand.

Pantry challenge: Days Eight through Twelve

Boy, everything goes to heck during the holidays, doesn't it?

We've had multiple meals out-- church staff dinners and potlucks, parties with friends and anniversary dinners at fancy restaurants. On top of that, as I stated last week, weekends around here are made for leftovers. So there hasn't been a whole lot to report.

We did make a little bit of headway in the cereal stash. Although my ten-year-old informed me I'm buying all the wrong stuff. Apparently, I'm supposed to be purchasing that candy-in-a-box that masquerades as cereal. We've had oatmeal as well, and also grits. My kids like grits. Whoda thunk it?

Lunch has been mostly leftovers and PB and J, but you know, I'm OK with that. We're using up what we have. I'm hoping once the stockpiled stash is whittled down I'll be able to make some wiser choices when I start bulking it up again.

Last night we had another variation of a Mexican casserole-- this one had ground beef, seasonings, kidney beans and corn, and was topped with cornbread. These were all ingredients I had on hand.

Tonight we had a stirfry, again with on-hand ingredients. I cut up some round steak I had down in the freezer and added tons of leftover rice and veggies. It was pretty yummy!

Of course, with Christmas coming I did have to break down and buy a ton of food. We're having clam chowder on Christmas Eve, a huge meal Christmas Day, and meatball subs when family comes on Boxing Day. But I've also managed to use some stuff from my pantry. Tonight I made Glazed Chocolate Mini Loaves from this recipe, minus any Nestle ingredients since we boycott them. I had everything on hand, and bought some darling little mini loaf pans at Michael back at the beginning of the month. And we're making some chocolates in molds by melting down some Starbucks milk chocolate bars we bought 3/$1 at the Surplus Outlet.

One dubious advantage of being a clergy family is that we don't have to make cookies if we don't want to. The church ladies keep the pastor and his family well supplied! I have about 3 dozen assorted cookies sitting here, and that's not counting what the pastor managed to eat in his study. We are very blessed. Still, if I don't run out of time-- you don't want to see my pre-Christmas to-do list!-- I might make some cookies in the next few days with the kids.

Wishing you peace in the pre-Christmas rush!

Took the weekend off blogging...

Christmas is always a busy time, and this year seems even busier than usual!

Last week, Michael had his orchestra concert. We were especially proud of his performance as part of the Sheridan fiddle group!

Please excuse the darkness, as well as the fact that a very proud daddy was focused on Michael and not on the rest of the group!

Here's the happy quintet!

Thursday was also our fifteenth wedding anniversary!

I got to join the church staff for a lovely Christmas lunch.

On Friday, we got our Christmas tree! We usually get this around our anniversary. We used to wait until Christmas Eve, but it was slim pickings by then. Of course, this is a bit of a funky shaped tree as well.

It was fun to see how much Daniel got into it this year.


A few favorite ornaments:
1. A little knit stocking from my friend Jenn's wedding
2. A mistletoe fairy my husband gave me
3. A wool angel from a Waldorf ornament exchange I did years ago

The whole tree!

Saturday brought 3 basketball games, delivery of Christmas baskets and gifts with the church, some grocery shopping, and a good bit of snow! The on Sunday, the church potluck and Sunday School Christmas pageant.

The three oldest had roles in the play, We Three Kings

and Daniel made his Christmas pageant debut singing Away in the Manger!

He REALLY liked rocking that baby!

And then we feasted.


Today was a mellow day. I've been finishing up some gifts and making ornaments for kids, putting the finishing touches on my meal plan for the week and making plans to get my hair done tomorrow.

Wishing you a peaceful week before Christmas!

We made these beautiful Nativity silhouettes from That Artist Woman today. Aren't they lovely?

Pantry Challenge: Day Seven

No more pictures for you all, I guess, LOL! For some reason, I never think to take pictures of our food. It's just, you know, food, and since I have to come up with something to eat five times a day, there's barely time to plan and cook it, let alone take a photo.

BREAKFAST: Bacon and eggs and OJ. The bacon was frozen turkey bacon that was part of a BOGO promotions.

MORNING SNACK: Applesauce. Again, part of my "let's pick a whole bunch of fruit and freeze it!" scheme.

LUNCH: Peanut butter and jelly and orange slices.

Then all my plans for healthy eating went to hell in a handbasket when a package from my mother filled with Christmas yummies showed up at the door, including some homemade Moose Munch.

AFTERNOON SNACK: Shockingly enough, even after the Moose Munch, they wanted afternoon snack. I have about 10 Guiltless Gourmet cake mixes that were 3/$1, so everyone got their own little cake. Yummy, and really, the ingredient list isn't bad at all.

DINNER: Chicken drumsticks with a maple syrup/lemon juice glaze. The drumsticks were all natural, antibiotic-free, raised in PA, marked down at Weis. Unfortunately maple syrup is the one thing I can never get cheap, and now I'm out. Must add to the grocery list. We had this with herbed rice and peas, also stockpiled.

Workbox Wednesday: Katie Grace

It's Miss Katie Face's turn to be featured on Workbox Wednesday!

She started off with a little bit of spelling. We use "My Catholic Speller" from Catholic Heritage Curriculum. I know, I know, the kids are being raised Lutheran-- but we tried A Reason for Spelling last year and all the stories about alcoholic fathers and impending divorce and doom were depressing.


Next, a little wet-felting to make beads. So fun. We have no idea what we're going to do with them though.


Katie Grace has been learning about different types of graph, and what could be a sweeter way to drive the lesson home than M & M graphing?


Next, Katie Grace finished up a little bird ornament she was sewing.


And then, a little reading from The Nutcracker.


Katie Grace's friend who goes to a public school sent her a Flat Stanley, and Katie Grace decided to write about him going to homeschool co-op.


And finally, we bound her Seven Days of Creation watercolor paintings with ribbon.