Gifts from God....

"Unto Thee, O God, do we give thanks,

unto Thee do we give thanks:

for that thy name is near thy wondrous works declare."

Psalm 75:1

There is so much to give thanks for, I will just start to scratch the surface....

120~ Winter (okay really Autumn) skies. Such pretty colors with the bare black trees.

121~ Beautiful snow, so soft and fluffy.

122~ Shells gathered on the beach of the Atlantic, each one different, each one beautiful even when broken.

123~ A phone call from a friend I hadn't actually spoke with in years (We do the annual Christmas letter exchange).

124~ The good news that the friend's surgery (double mastectomy) went well!

125~ Beautiful Christmas music playing.... Mannheim Steamroller- my favorite.

126~Lots of pictures!

127~ All the happy memories that they recorded.

128~This cold, snowy time of year where I have fun doing inside projects like putting pictures into albums.

129~ Joy! God sure is good to us, to give us so much joy.

130~Smiles.

131~ Good deals that help us save money.

132~Fun visits with other homeschoolers.

133~Getting to watch my children in creative play and construction. Enjoying seeing their castles and airplanes and all of the things they do.

134~Having fun learning together.

135~ God always being there and always having the answers!

Seek

"But from there you will seek the Lord your God,

and you will find Him if you search for Him with all your heart

and all your soul."

Deuteronomy 4:29

Do you ever have questions? Do you ever feel the need for peace and love and comfort? I know I do. I am not complete on my own, I most certainly don't have all the answers. But I do know somebody that does. My God also can fill my life with peace and love and joy and hope when I take the time to seek Him and His way.

This morning at church Mathew shared some good thoughts on Seeking for God's Treasure which is God's word. To do that we need to spend time on it, we need to seek with a purpose and then we need to do what it says!

Another things that has been reminding me about seeking lately has been reading a book about the Wright Brothers. One of the verses they were constantly quoting was "Ask and it shall be given to you, seek and ye shall find, Knock and the door shall be opened to you." They were pursuing something that was "impossible" for men but not for God. They went to the right source to get the job done.

Are you remembering to seek for truth in your life?

Alphabet Adventures A-D

On Wednesday I mentioned that we were going to be doing Alphabet Adventures again at our house. Here are a few snapshots of what we have been doing.....

On "A" day we went grocery shopping and I happened to notice the artichokes and avocados in the produce section. The kids and I had never tasted artichokes before (I was amazed to learn that Ken had!) and so I looked up how to cook them and added them to our supper's menu. (I also tried to make aoili sauce to dip them with. I had never made that before either and I don't think it turned out all that well but at least it started with A! :-)

I can't say we were overly impressed with artichoke (I was disappointed because I was reading online about how incredibly yummy it was!), Jonathan's facial expression above was pretty typical for the kids on trying it.

On "B" day we had fun gluing on buttons in the shape of a B for our letter pictures. For the little "b" they drew a bat and ball side by side.
On "C" day we had a grand and messy time making candles. We recycled old yucky candles for the wax. They actually turned out pretty neat! I will tell you more about them on Thursday.On "D" day we enjoyed doughnuts for breakfast. I tried raised and baked doughnuts. It was nice not to have all the grease but at the same time they tasted quite a bit different. Everybody thought they were delicious anyway.
For our opening of school time I thought it might be fun to have "Drums" to play along with our singing. The kids that it was very fun. Seeing their rhythm perhaps it would be good to use them more often so we could work on that! We also said our books of the Bible while beating out a rhythm with the drums. Be warned that the video below is not high musical quality but it is high in fun! :-)

Well that has been some of the things happening at our house this week, what has been going on for you?

A Handmade Christmas ~Week 4

Welcome back to A Handmade Christmas, after skipping Thanksgiving Week (So we had time to devote to one of my very favorite holidays) we are back for week 4. I hope you have had time to come up with some fun ideas to share and that you join right in!

This week I thought it would be fun to tell about a few odds and ends of gifts. To start with we decided to participate in Operation Christmas Child this year. It is something I had heard about in the past but never really checked into. This year we looked into it and after we watched all the videos on their site the kids and I thought it would be really neat to contribute to.

Please excuse the funny faces of my children~ they had the sun in their eyes!

We didn't think about it to far in advance so we had to work fast after that. We decided that each child could send a box to another child of the same gender and age group so we had 4 boxes to fill. We raided our gift cupboard and extra school supplies and then made a trip to dollar tree but beyond that we thought it would be fun to make some things for them. So here is a few of the things we did:

~ We had some hat blanks around and so we decided to decorate them. Here Aaron is modeling the one he made (with a little help from me) with a train on it.
Megan loved stitching a flower on to hers. I kind of had to guide each stitch but she thought it was a blast to pull it through.

Megan was so fun through out this whole process, she kept asking "Can I give this to my little girl?". I was afraid a few times that she thought we were making or buying something for her, but she didn't have any problems with giving it all away.

~ For the older girl (10-14) we decided to make an elastic waist skirt and a raglan sleeve shirt. I am really hoping that it is versatile enough in size to fit whoever receives it. Mara and I had fun working on this together. We are starting to be able to work as a team when sewing. I will do the cutting out and pinning and then I can hand it off to her to sew. I remember doing that a lot with my mom so it is fun to have that experience again, except with my daughter. Working together we were able to make the outfit in around an hour.

In the picture above she is also modeling the hat which she had stitched beads on in the shape of flowers.

~For the boys' boxes we also made small notebooks from colored paper we had on hand and then we used foam for the covers. Mara's box was a little bigger so we were able to fit in a regular notebook which we had decorated the front of.

~ The kids made Beaded Geckos and other little animals to fit in the box.

~ Instead of sending just plain washcloths I thought it would be fun to fold them into a fun shape. At Zakka Life I was able to find instructions for this cute little bird. They were super simple to do. Now I am just wondering if the kids who receive them will actually use the washcloth or will just have this funny little bird.

And off the subject of shoe boxes....
Another gift we had fun creating lately was this little baby quilt for a little niece of mine that is coming soon. I wanted to deliver it to my pregnant sister-in-law when we saw her over Thanksgiving. This is another project that Mara and I had fun doing together. With her help it went pretty fast. (And sorry Luann about the picture- she had just jumped out of bed at 4:30 in the morning to tell us goodbye when I took it- not very nice of me!)

I was inspired by this quilt over at Brown Paper Packages. Mine doesn't quite match up to hers though. She has a good tutorial for making one too.

Here are some other fun ideas that I would love to try:

• A Bean Bag chair (and use packing peanuts for the filler).
• This cute scrunchy scarf (which I think I could recycle t-shirts into)
• A simple photo collage.
  

Now it is your turn! Please join me and share your handmade ideas!

To link up~
~Write a post about anything you are doing that is handmade for Christmas. (Gifts, decorations, food, etc.).
~In that post please link back to here.
~Then using MckLinky, add your link to the list. Please make sure it is linking to your specific post (not just your blog).
~Then have fun following the links to see others' great ideas!

Also be sure and come back next week. I am hoping to work a lot on decorating this week and have some ideas I want to try and then share.

Making Learning Fun

As frequent readers know, we homeschool and love it! Part of the reason we love it is because we try to make learning enjoyable. Learning truly is exciting but about everything can be presented in boring ways too. We too struggle with a little bit of burn out once in a while in one area or another so when that happens it is time to get creative and figure out how to make it fun again!

Here are some ways we have been making learning fun around here lately:

• Following our interests/passions. I told about how Jonathan has been doing that in yesterday's post.
• Having a month of Alphabet Adventures again. We had a blast with this 2 years ago and we decided it would be fun to do it again. We are working on a new letter every day (though not weekends or holidays) and we try to incorporate that in every part of our lives from dressing to eating, Bible Memorization, singing, books and art and much more! For Megan (age 3) this is helping her to learn the letters, for Aaron (6) it is helping him to relate letters and sounds together in preparation for reading and for Jonathan (8) I am hoping the review of letters and sounds might help with his spelling. As for Mara (10) she is having fun with helping with the cooking, art work and is learning new verses. I am hoping to do a post each Saturday with some of our highlights from each week.
• Traveling and exploring educational places. Our trip to North Carolina was definitely a learning time!
• Visiting the Library. We went to the Library yesterday and again I realized how blessed we are to have all of that available to us at no cost! Yesterday we had a normal day of checking out books and came home with 50 of them. The librarian entertained himself by counting how many books we had while checking them out. He decided their numbers were up at the library because of people like us. Anyway.... while were are there I usually tell the kids they can pick out around 7 books. Mara picks out chapter books, Jonathan a mixture of those and kids books and the younger two pick out kids books, meanwhile I look over the non-fiction children's section and pick out a large selection of biographies, scientific books, geography, history, literature, art and more. Even though my kids don't necessarily pick them out on their own they love to read them when I bring them home. Some we read together and some they read on their own. This time I also picked out a couple of educational videos which they were very excited about (Ken and I always chuckle over what our kids will sit and watch -things most kids and some adults would consider dry - but our kids love them because that is pretty much the only time they watch anything).
• Learning from CDs. Recently we received our homeschool order from Christian Book Distributors and in that I got a CD that has two abridged and dramatically read works of Shakespeare and also a CD with music and story about George Frederic Handel. Both of them my kids have really enjoyed but yet they have gotten in literature, history and music while listening to them.
• Another thing we ordered which the kids have enjoyed is some Mathematical learning wrap ups. The boys have had fun playing (and learning) with them.

Making learning fun really works for us! Just to clarify this doesn't mean we don't work or need to be diligent- that is extremely important too, but work can and should be fun and being diligent can be enjoyed as well!

Jonathan's Aircraft Project

Today I thought it would be fun to show you not one of my projects but one of Jonathan's. He has loved making things for a long time and I enjoy seeing what he comes up with. Lately it has been Popsicle stick planes. First they started out quite simple.... a few sticks for the body and a few sticks for wings (he uses the hot glue gun to put them together) but know he is way past that!

One evening he disappeared into my office/craft room and then came out with this:
The picture really doesn't do it justice. It is an old fashioned (think Wright brothers) style plane which is over 2 feet across. He also made and attached wheels and propellers.

After he started making the planes we started reading "They gave us wings, The Wright Brothers" by Charles Ludwig (it is part of the Sower series and a great book). Every day while I read he sits totally absorbed while It talks about camber, square footage and correct wing lift. It has been so fun to see his passion for air travel.

While flying out to North Carolina, Jonathan had a blast watching the planes and jets and figuring out everything he could about them. Watching the wings adjust during flight was fascinating for him. He also brought along a little series of books we had on the History of flight and had fun reading them and learning a lot.

While at the Airborne museum we saw a glider that carried the little jeeps so when we got home he decided he needed to making something of that nature. Here he is hard at work:
And then the finished creation: Today's activity was to figure out how to hang them up all around the boys' room. We also went to the library and he was totally delighted when I found a bunch of books that talk about different types of aircraft, how to fly a plane, History, and Biographies of a couple pilots. We also checked out a video on a WWII plane which we watched this evening. Something I love about this is how much he can learn from just following his interests. Just in studying planes he has learned Science, History, Math and Geography. His passion has also pulled his siblings (and Ken and I) into being interested in it so the learning has spread throughout the whole family.

Do you have any cool book suggestions of fun activity ideas for encouraging his learning and exploring in this area? I would love to hear!

Linked to DIY day at A Soft Place to Land.