Santa's Favorite Story is a book that just begs to be read at our house! I love this story! It is from the viewpoint of Santa; he tells all the animals of the forest that Christmas isn't really all about him (Santa) but about someone much more important - JESUS!  I love the illustrations in this story - they are beautiful watercolor pictures.

I believe our activity for today will be watercoloring a picture of Santa! We will use the beautiful illustrations in this story as our guide!

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The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey -- I actually found this movie at the bible book store last week! So, that will be an exciting addition to our Christmas this year! I remember the book being a little bit longer, so we have not read it yet, and I think this year we will probably just watch the movie. (I haven't previewed it yet, but I plan to do so.)

There is a unit on homeschool share for this book as well, found HERE.

Today we will have a small discussion on what miracles are -- do you know what a miracle is? Who have we read about in the Bible that can perform miracles? Can you remember some of the miracles Jesus performed that we have learned about? We will look in their children's Bible and review a few of Jesus miracles.

We will also be making our own nativity today, just like Mr. Toomey did in our story. I saw a neat picture somewhere that had a small picture of the holy family in the stable, the girls will color this. And then, you sort of build a stable shape out of wooden craft sticks. I hope to post pictures when we are done, because I am not doing a very good job explaining it!  Here is a sample of a simple nativity that we might color. But, I need to find a smaller one, or shrink it somehow.

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I also love learning new Christmas carols with the kids each  year! I can remember 2 years ago Emily was 2 1/2 and she was obsessed with the manger! We had learned Away in a Manger and she was just the cutest thing singing that song and carrying around the manger from our nativity set!

A beautiful book about a beloved Christmas carol is Silent Night, with illustrations by Thomas Kinkade. This is one of those books I picked up and just could not put down because of the beautiful illustrations! The pages of this book go through each line of the Christmas carol with beautiful pictures to go along with it. Maybe this will be *the* carol we work on this year along with some of the words in sign language.  We will also listen to various versions of this beautiful song.

I believe I will also try and check out a few other titles that go along with this Christmas carol. I know there are other beautiful versions to go with Silent Night as well. We will listen to this carol and then sing it as well. I will have some of the words learned myself in sign language by then to teach the kids, too.

I think this year we will discuss the night of Jesus birth...do you think it was silent? Why would it be thought of as a "holy night" and see what answers the girls come up with.

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Another Christmas book by Tomie DaPaola is Country Angel Christmas. This one is another cute story about 3 smaller angels not knowing what they can give the newborn King because they are so small. This is a great book to use as a reminder that we can ALL be cheerful givers no matter how big or small we are!

With this book we are going to make angel crafts!

*learn how to draw an angel with an Usborne "how to draw" book.

*make THIS angel craft using felt, isn't she cute?

*color the angel from this page   and review what the angel said to Mary.

*sing angel carols - Angels We Have Heard on High, Hark! The Herald Angels Sing