Kindergarten Assessment

Here's a link to some Kindergarten assessment activities: http://homeschoolparent.blogspot.com/2008/12/kindergarten-assessments.html

Christmas Project Success!

We handed out our Christmas treats yesterday and today, and were met with bright smiles, warm hearts and lots of "Merry Christmas" wishes. It was amazing how a little kindness could start conversations between strangers who never would have taken the time to chat otherwise. G was a great little helper and really got into giving away treats. We started by giving one to his kung fu instructor and the kids in his kung fu class last night. Then we stopped by a friend's house and gave them some treats. We gave one to the grocery store clerk, auntie and the people in her office, and the girls at our apartment office. Then we went to Starbucks for some hot chocolate, and as we sat there I could see the idea come into G's mind..."I'm going to hand out goodies to everyone sitting here in Starbucks", and off he went with treats in hand, passing them around the store with a "Merry Christmas" and a smile. It was so much fun! We'll definitely be doing this again next year!

My First Sock

I wanted to try knitting some socks, and this is definitely the right time of year for it, so I decided to knit some socks for G. I've got one done so far and have learned a lot! I'm pretty excited about how it turned out. Now to try to make a match!

Gingerbread House

We made this gingerbread house today for Uncle Erik. We got the fun of putting it together, and Erik will get the calories. Everyone is happy! :-)

Our Christmas Project is Ready!

We did the last of our baking today and made our little goody bags. We will hand these out to the people we come in contact with in our community. Just a little homemade Christmas gift to share the love of God. We have attached a Christmas Bible verse to each package to remind people of the real meaning of Christmas. We're planning to give these out next week to our librarians, the grocery store clerk, the UPS man...anyone we come in contact with as we go about our day. We are praying that God will use us to touch the world around us.

Baked Item of the Day

Today we baked these Hershey Kiss Cookies:

More Crafts and Baking

Today G and I made these bookmarks for the special people in his life who love to read.

We also whipped up some Christmas fudge...mmm. Now the trick is to keep my fingers out of it so we'll have some to give away. :-)

First Purchase

G made his first purchase with his own money today. DH and I occasionally get Dove bars to eat after G goes to bed, and we're pretty stingy with them, so G decided he would buy his own. When we got to the store, we found that the Haagen-Dazs bars were on sale, so G got those instead. He was so excited to have his special treat tonight that he bought with his own money.
It turned out to be a nice simple math lesson as well. G took his $5 bill to the store, the bars were $3, and he got $2 back. We discussed that more on the way home.

Let the Christmas Baking Begin!

We kicked off the Christmas baking season with these gingerbread cookies. G had fun drizzling icing all over them and decorating them with sprinkles.
Here's the recipe we used for these. It was fun to see how the baking soda reacted with the molasses mixture!

Today's Craft...

Handprint and footprint reindeer craft!

Poinsettia Craft

Today we did this poinsettia craft using construction paper, glue and glitter glue. G loves crafts, and we haven't done many lately, so I thought this would be a great week to do a few.

How to Bake an Apple Pie and See the World

This week's Five in a Row book was How to Bake an Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman. It was a fun book about traveling to several different world locations to gather ingredients for baking an apple pie. Some of the activities we did to go along with the story were:

1. We looked at a book about Italy, introduced G to some of the major Italian landmarks, and found Italy on the world map.

2. We did the same for France and then built our own Eiffel towers out of popsicle sticks. Daddy was the perfect leader for this project!

3. We found Sri Lanka on the world map.

4. We looked at a book about Jamaica (paying special attention to pictures of sugar cane plants).

5. We found Vermont on the US map.

6. We read a great science book called How Do Apples Grow? by Betsy Maestro.

7. We did a science project: Evaporating the water out of salt water and finding out what was left (salt crystals). G even enjoyed a taste test.
8. We made an apple pie and discussed measurements and fractions as we prepared the pie for baking.

On to Christmas

And just that quickly, Thanksgiving is over and our thoughts go directly to Christmas. G drew this last night. It's one of his first drawings of a person who has a body and not just legs coming out of his head. :-) This is Santa on a sled full of gifts.

Thankful Tree

Here's this year's thankful tree. This year G is thankful for Dad, Me, Grandma, 1234 (numbers?), Uncle Erik, Grant, Plants, Mom, Grandpa, Vitamin D (he likes his new vitamins), God and Kiki (the cat).