Our Graham Cracker House & T.A.R.D.I.S.s!

Since we have all been battling colds & even bronchitis (M6), we haven't been feeling up to doing many Christmas-y things. The hubs made the trip to the store for me to buy our goodies for our graham cracker houses. He came home with white frosting so after a bit of searching I found a recipe that says to use 1/4 teaspoon of Cream of Tartar to 1 Cup frosting & it should stiffen it up. I didn't really see a difference &, as you can see, the hard candy didn't stick all that great to L8's & slid down.  *Update - the recipe DID work but it took a while for it to dry hard.*

L8 still isn't feeling all that great so it took a bit of nudging to get him to join in. He did as much as he could before having enough. Here is his masterpiece:

The girls decided to make T.A.R.D.I.S.s (from Doctor Who) instead & Christmasfied them up. I just added blue food coloring to the frosting. Because I snipped the hole too big on the ends of the baggies for the frosting, it came out too thick for the windows...oops. But they were still happy with the end results.

J12

M6

(btw - we cheated & used a black Sharpie for the Police Box sign.)

Add some confectioners sugar & you have instant snow!

I had it planned to do a large gingerbread T.A.R.D.I.S myself but like I said, the sickness took over & that idea was scrapped. There's always next year....at least we have mini ones!

Next up....Doctor Who cookies!

Happy Holidays!

Victorian Christmas Unit

Yesterday, I posted in my Weekly Wrap-Up/Homeschool Mother's Journal post that I was putting together a Victorian Christmas unit for J12 & that I would post those at a later date. Wellllll....it wasn't until after I posted it that I realized just how close Christmas was! So here is a quick list of some of the links I have found.

~A Charles Dickens mini-unit
-Read A Christmas Carol. You can find it  online here along with reading comprehension questions. You can also download it for Kindle or Nook here. (You can download the FREE Kindle Reading app to read it on other devices such as your PC.)

-Here you can find a biblical lesson of A Christmas Carol.

-Make copywork from each chapter.

-Watch Charles Dickens animated biography.

-Watch video on what London was like during Dickens' time.

-Play Survive Dickens' London.

-You can get more great ideas here.


~Victorian Christmas
-Old Fashioned Victorian Christmas has tons of great links for activities & crafts.

-Make Your Own Victorian Christmas - 25 activities to do at home. And while there you can check out the history of Christmas.

-Victorian Christmas: Games & Activities. Scroll down to the bottom of that post to find links to Gifts, Food & Drink, Decorations, & Crafts!

-Here is a collection of resources from TeachersFirst.com.

-If you would like an all-in-one Victorian Christmas unit, NIA Unit Studies has one for $12.99! Included are crafts/projects, cooking, online games, literature, movies, & open ended researching for hands-on ideas. Also, includes notebooking pages & ideas for your own Victorian Christmas party! 


J12 is obsessed with the Victorian Era. So even though this year is supposed to be "everything Medieval" she will be studying this time period on her own. I will post about all those other finds later!

For more free Christmas resources check out my other posts here & here!


Happy Holidays!

Weekly Wrap-Up/Homeschool Mother's Journal

This week was a crazy week. Between the hubs hurting his arm/chest & missing a few days of work, to me waking up with a sore shoulder & not being able to move it for a whole day (getting old I guess), M6 & J12 getting sick, & now me....we hardly got anything done!! 
Oh yes...almost forgot that I had run out of ink for my printer over the weekend & wasn't able to print anything until Wednesday morning!!

We were eventually able to do some free Christmas printables that I found online. You can find those:
-FREE Christmas Resources Round-up
-More Great Christmas Resources For Free

On Monday we received a package from our lovely friends from England! All sorts of baking gadgets (Doctor Who themed!!) & a few things were put away for M6's birthday party next month. She has been planning a Doctor Who party so these couldn't have been more perfect! We were all hoping to be able to use them but we haven't yet for reasons stated above. Yes, we will Christmas-up these cookies! Doctor Who & Christmas just go together. There is also a gingerbread T.A.R.D.I.S. in the plans. ;)

J12 has been wanting to do a Victorian-themed Christmas unit so I have been finding a bunch of goodies for that. I will post those at a later date when I have it all organized. Also, I am planning a Grinch unit for M6 & L8 next week from a blog post I found recently at Lemon Lime Adventures .

One thing that did get started this week was our review of Keyboarding Classroom. 

I set L8 up with this one & was surprised when he took to it & actually liked it! He's the one who fights me the most on school & lately it's been the worst. I only asked him jokingly if he wanted to do it & he said yes so I ran with it! As of now, my review copy is a single-user license but when he is finished with it I can use it for the girls if they wanted to. They do have options to buy dual or more licenses & the finger guards are free! (Which honestly our 1st thoughts were that they were disposal razors! haha)

I finished up my review for Write From History earlier this week. That was a lot of fun & we are planning to continue using that this year since it fits so perfectly with our history study!

I also started another Facebook page: Daily Deals From A Nerd Mom. You can find that & this blog FB page on the right side up top. ---->

Hopefully next week I will have some Christmas-y goodies to blog about! I cannot wait to get started on our cookie & T.A.R.D.I.S. decorating...plus I found a cute idea on Pinterest to make mini graham cracker houses! This would be a neat way for each of the kids to decorate their own house.

Happy Holidays!

3 Educents Freebies plus a coupon!

Right now, Educents has 3 feebies plus a 55% off coupon! Click on each pic for the deal.....

Coupon Code : EDUCENTS13

Discount: 55%

What does the discount apply to? A 3 book purchase (Paris, Venice and London hard cover books) with shipping  included.

Please visit https://www.bellaandharry.com/product-details.php?i=20 to redeem this coupon!

Review: The Write From History Series

I was so excited to be a part of the Write From History series launch group & to get started on this! As most of you know, we are studying the Middle Ages this year. So when I found out that there was a Medieval History book in this series I was even MORE excited &, of course, chose that for my review!

In this series, there are 4 books: Write From Ancient History, Write From Medieval History, Write From Early Modern History, & Write From Modern History.  Each one has 2 levels to choose from, except Write From Modern History. This one only has Level 2 for now and Level 1 is to come summer of 2014. You also have the choice of manuscript or cursive & sells for $22.95 in your choice of printed or eBook.

Level 1 is for grades 1-3 & is a writing curriculum that combines writing, history, and handwriting practice all in one workbook. 
Level 2 is for students in grades 3 to 5 & includes manuscript writing models from interesting historical narratives, excerpts from primary source documents, poetry from or about ancient times, and fun cultural tales from around the world. (Taken from the Brookdale House site.)

Table of Contents

Write From Medieval History covers 600AD to 1600 AD & is divided into 4 Chapters: Historical Narratives, English Tales, Poetry From/or About Medieval History, & Cultural Tales. All 4 chapters include the reading selection, a page for a written narration, & also 2 passages to use as the writing modules.

 What I love so much is that you don't have to go in order in the book or even in the whole series! Whatever you are working on, or want to work on, you just look through the Table of Contents, which also serves as a timeline, & choose what/when you need!

Included are suggested schedules for using the book. It also suggests including a grammar study which I thought was really neat! With 3 kids it's always great to be able to include as many subjects into 1 lesson! J12 was even a part of this so, as you can see by the above pic, I had her write her modules in cursive since she needs more practice. It was a great grammar review for her as well! I hadn't even attempted to start grammar lessons with L8 & even M6 but this was a great introduction to nouns for them! (M6 didn't do that part but sat in on that convo.) For the grammar study, it suggests introducing each part of speech 1 month at a time to make sure they have it down before moving on. 

The only problem I had with this book was that it doesn't have an answer key for the grammar part. It does have a quick reference guide in the Appendix though which was a big help.

We will definitely continue with this book during our studies this year! It's a great addition & doesn't take long to do either!

For more reviews, head on over to Multi Taskin' Mom!

List of Free Christmas Kindle eBooks

(This post contains affiliate links.)

We love using our Kindle Fires to read eBooks & there are a ton of free ones on Amazon. Even if you don't have a Kindle, you can still download the free reading app for all of your devices!

Here is a list of some Christmas stories I've found. *Make sure to check the prices before downloading!*


       

     

      

       



        



           


        



        



     



       



       



       



       



       



        



   



     



     



   

Happy Holidays!