A week from today is Christmas! This time of year, as we turn our thoughts towards the birth of Christ, is the perfect time to share the BEST freebie of all with kids! The free gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ!
Romans 6:23 tells us:
For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
And in John 3:16 we learn:
For God so loved the world, that he gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
and Acts 16:31 tells us
. . . Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved . . .
It is all so simple, and it's FREE! Click here to find freebies that will help you share with children how Jesus died for our sins and offers us eternal life as a free gift.
I posted this 2 years ago on my blog. I still love it , so I thought I would share it again. I don't dislike Santa...but Jesus is the real reason for the season! Only 1 more week until Christmas!
Why Jesus is Better Than Santa Claus
By Rev. James Spellman of Ohio
*Santa lives at the North Pole... JESUS is everywhere.
*Santa rides in a sleigh... JESUS rides on the wind and walks on the water.
*Santa comes but once a year... JESUS is an ever present help.
*Santa fills your stockings with goodies... JESUS supplies all your needs.
*You have to wait in line to see Santa... JESUS is as close as the mention of His name.
*Santa lets you sit on his lap... JESUS lets you rest in His arms.
*Santa doesn't know your name, all he can say is "Hi little boy or girl, what's your name?"... JESUS knew our name before we did. Not only does He know our name, He knows our address too. He knows our history and future and He even knows how many hairs are on our head.
*Santa has a belly like a bowl full of jelly... JESUS has a heart full of love.
*All Santa can offer is HO HO HO... JESUS offers health, help and hope.
*Santa says "You better not cry"... JESUS says "Cast all your cares on me for I care for you."
*Santa's little helpers make toys... JESUS makes new life, mends wounded hearts, repairs broken homes and builds mansions.
*Santa may make you chuckle but...JESUS gives you a joy that is your strength.
*While Santa puts gifts under your tree... JESUS became our gift and died on the tree.
Its obvious there is really no comparison! Jesus is still the reason for the season. Yes, Jesus is better, he is even better than Santa Claus.
I found this poem over at the 1+1+1=1 blog. It is part of a lovely FREE Christmas Symbols lapbook she has put together! I just LOVE the poem! It completely speaks to how I feel about Christmas in my heart!
My little man turned 6 yesterday! WOW! Time flies. Here are a few pictures from his party at Chuck E. Cheese!
Our family + 1. :^)
The guests...
The cake!
The gifts...
The collapse on the way home! :^)
It was a great day! We started the day with gifts. Then we took him out to brunch. In the afternoon his best friend came over to play. We had the party at dinner time. We never even got to do his birthday treasure hunt because we ran out of time. So he will be really surprised to get to do that today!
I can't believe he is 6! Time goes waaaaayyyyy too fast!
Now that I have my posts written about Josefina I can start thinking about Kirsten! We won't start meeting again for American Girl until January. But, I am determined to have everything planned out and prepped before we start this time!
1. Swedish Meatballs
2. Swedish Crackers with Lingonberry Jam
3. Swedish Rice Porridge (Skansk Grot)
4. Rye Bread and homemade butter. (Have girls make the butter in a jar.)
5. Potato Soup
6. Pepparkakor Cookies
Whew, so there is the plan! Now for the shopping and cutting and prepping. Then I am ready to go!
The hard part about trying to post about the last 3 weeks of Josefina 6 weeks after we finished the study is I CAN'T REMEMBER what we did! LOL I have been SO busy with unpacking, homeschooling, Thanksgiving and Christmas I just keep putting off posting about the end of Josefina. So I finally went back and flipped through the pictures I took and this is what it looks like we did the last 3 weeks of club! I am not going to try to put it all in order. It's all just too blurry!
There was one activity we did that I know the girls really liked. I think it's in book 4 where they take the blankets they have woven to the market and sell them. I wanted the girls to get an idea what it was like to have to trade on the barter system. So I brought a bunch off odd things to represent other things and had them trade. We broke the girls up into 4 groups. One group had paper cups that represented sheep. One group had paper napkins that represented blankets. One group had a mix of things. Mirrors, jewelry, crafts. (Whatever I had in my craft cupboard!) and the last group had money. The girls had to go around and trade with each other and try to get a good "deal". They had to decide how many blankets a sheep was worth and how many craft items were worth a blanket. Etc. The object was to end up with something from each group. After the finished we talked about their experience. Was it easier for the group that had money? (I had gotten some BIG coins at the dollar store designed to be hung on a schoolroom wall.) How did they decide the value of the different items? It was interesting to see their thoughts and hear their ideas.
The crafts we did for the last 3 weeks of Josefina were:
coiled pots, whisk brooms and memory books We also made geography notebooks and weavings.
Coiled Pot These are made with air dry clay. Super simple. Just make coils and roll them into a pot! These were lots of fun. I also provided glass beads for the girls to decorate their pots with.
Whisk Broom For this craft I cut up the larger brooms I got at the dollar store to make the smaller ones! LOL Our finished brooms were the type of brooms (right side) that Josefina would have used not only to sweep the floor but to comb her hair too! The girls had fun combing each others hair when they finished these.
Memory Book In one of the books when Josefina's aunt comes to visit she tells them about the memory book she keeps to help her remember their mama who died a year earlier. To make our book we used brown craft paper for the cover. The girls colored a picture on it and then we crumpled them up to make them look old. We folded over white paper for the inside and held it all together with yarn.
Here are the girls coloring their memory books.
The Geography Notebooks are something we did the same night we made the brooms. Since the brooms took about 2 minutes to make we had extra time. So I printed out a map to mark where Josefina lived and then some worksheets about New Mexico. We will add pages for each of the girls as we study them.
Weaving was an ongoing project we worked on a little every night. Not only did the girls work on their cardboard weavings, but I also had a small lap loom for them to try out.
My daughter giving the lap loom a try.
The lap loom was a hit!
The girls had a lot of fun with the cardboard weavings too.
My daughters finished project now hangs proudly in our new schoolroom!
So that is what I remember about Josefina! LOL I have learned my lesson for sure, I have to blog as I go! If only there was more time in the day!
To play you pass the top around the circle, each person taking a turn spinning it. When it is your turn to spin you get to pick up the word that the top stops on. The object to to get all 4 words...CALL HIS NAME IMMANUEL. I printed out the Bible verse to remind them that Immanuel means "God with us." The first person to get all 4 words yells out GOD WITH US!
We have 40 kids signed up for the party. So we will have them in 4 groups of 10. They will travel through 4 stations. At two stations they will make ornaments and at two they will play a game.
We are looking forward to it! This is a fun way to remember that "Jesus is the reason for the season!"
Friday we are having a Happy Birthday Jesus party with our homeschool group. The kids will be making 2 Christmas ornaments at the party. Here are the samples that my kiddos and I made yesterday.
Candy Cane Ornament Here is what is written on the Candy Cane one.
The Candy Cane
“J” is for Jesus the one and only son of God whose birth we celebrate at Christmas.He came as an act of love to save us from our sins.
The white base color of the candy cane reminds us that he was pure and completely without sin.
The red stripes remind us of the blood He shed to save us from our sins.
The candy is bent into a cane to remind us that Jesus is the Good Shepherd. Turn it over and it becomes a "J" for Jesus!
A simple piece of candy, yet it is so much more.A reminder of our Lord and Saviour!
These are both super simple and super inexpensive to make. The angels cost about $6.00 to make 40 and the candy cane ones cost about $10.00 to make 40. Not bad, huh?
Well after a little over 8 weeks in the new house we are pretty much unpacked. The downstairs is done and we are living in every inch of it! So I thought I would share with you our latest and greatest schoolroom!
This is the main sitting area in the schoolroom. I look forward to many hours of couch time here with my littles reading our Sonlight!
This is my favorite new addition to the schoolroom. I LOVE this painting which I wanted to buy 2 years ago for our other house but I didn't have room for it. A friend had bought it 2 years ago but no longer had room for it so I managed to talk her out of it. :^) On the shelf below the picture are souvenirs from our travels all over the USA. We have had a lot of fun putting it together and look forward to adding a lot more trinkets in the future.
Here is our wall of beloved books and our school table.
The big open space in the middle of the room is my favorite space! Lots of room to get down on the floor and work on things. A true blessing!
And if we need even more space we can spread into the entry way too. The whole space is 18' X 18'. It is wonderful! I still can't believe it is ours!
While I am showing the schoolroom I might as well show you the rest of the downstairs too. This is the family room.
And the family room from the other direction.
This is the dining area and the kitchen. (Laundry room and pantry is off the kitchen through the door by the fridge. The hall leads back to the schoolroom.)
As you can see we have all our treasures unpacked and on display. I guess you can tell I LOVE STUFF! LOL (Except moving it! YIKES! That is a job!)
You can see pictures of our last 2 schoolrooms HERE.
My daughter and I hosted a Christmas Party for our American Girl Club Tuesday night. It was FUN having all the girls and their mom's over to our new house. It feels a little more like home now that we have had so many great friends here!
Here are my daughter and I all ready for the party to start!
To keep things simplke for me we asked for each family to bring a dessert or finger food to share and one wrapped ornament for each person attending.
Here are all the pretty girls as they arrived at the party.
To keep the girls busy while we were waiting for everyone to arrive we played a little game. I had pre-written name tags with the names of all the historical American Girls. (Addy, Felicity, Josefina, Julie, Kaya, Kirsten, Kit, Molly, Rebecca and Samantha.) As the girls came in I put a name tag on their back without them seeing it. Then they had to go to the other girls and ask them questions that could only be answered with Yes and No to try and figure out who they were. Since we are still working our way through the books I also made a poster with the name, year that the historical girls stories take place and one other piece of info about each girl.
Here is what my poster had on it.
Addy 1864 Civil War
Felicity 1774 Revolutionary War
Josefina 1824 New Mexico
Julie 1976 San Francisco
Kaya 1764 Nez Perce
Kirsten 1854 Pioneer
Kit 1934 Great Depression
Molly 1944 WWII
Rebecca 1914 New Your City
Samantha 1904 Industrial Revolution
After each girl figured out who they were they came to me and I gave them a piece of candy. This worked really well to keep everyone busy and entertained during the arrival time
Once we were all here I had another game for the girls. This was my daughters idea. (She said she played it at a birthday party in Las Vegas.) We had all the girls sit in a circle. I had wrapped 4 gifts with 8 to 12 layers on each gift. (Yes this took FOREVER! LOL) Mixed into the layers I also put 3 post-it notes per gift that said something like...Give to someone wearing pink. Give someone wearing glasses. etc. The game was played by unwrapping one layer of paper and then passing the gift to the right, unless there was a note telling them to pass it somewhere else. With 4 gifts for 18 girls everyone got to open a layer, or two. The 4 girls who took off the last layers got to keep the gifts. For the gifts I had gotten some neat American Girl Pop-up books at Borders and some American Girl stickers at Michaels.
Here they are just starting to open all the layers.
And here is the BIG pile of paper towards the end of the unwrapping!
After we cleaned up all the paper if was time to swap the ornaments we all had brought. I wanted to make this into a game too. Luckily I found this FUN idea online to swap gifts. What you do is write a story to be read aloud that has the words RIGHT and LEFT used over and over. Everyone sits in a circle and holds a gift. As they listen to the story they have to pass the gifts RIGHT and LEFT when they hear those words. Here is the story I made up:
Once upon a time there was a wonderful group of American girls who LEFT their homes every Tuesday night to go RIGHT to American Girl Club. The first time they LEFT their homes they LEFT on a beautiful warm Fall evening. After getting RIGHT to American Girl Club all the girls met each other and it was all RIGHT! Soon they got RIGHT to learning History together. They were happy that their mom’s where RIGHT there with them and had not LEFT them somewhere to learn History alone.
Week after week the girls LEFT their homes to get RIGHT together. Each week they got RIGHT to discussing the stories and they LEFT having learned a little more history. The crafts LEFT no one disappointed and the activities they did together were just RIGHT!
The club started with Samantha and went RIGHT to Kaya. Then they went RIGHT to Felicity and that LEFT Josefina. Next they will go RIGHT to Kirsten!
The best part of all is that the girls have friends to the LEFT and the RIGHT of them and both the mom’s and the girls have become the RIGHT kind of friends!
Thank you God for bringing these awesome girls and mom’s RIGHT together!
This was VERY fun and there were a lot of sweet giggles from the girls as they watched the gifts go around.
Next we got to EAT!!!
After eating we played one more game. Believe it or not I Googled "American Girl Bingo" and found free printable bingo cards! I printed them out and we used marshmallows as our markers. We played several rounds. I started out calling out the names of the American Girls. Then I did the years they lived. Then I did a basic fact about each. After each round the winners got a piece of candy. The girls had a lot of fun playing Bingo!
Here are the girls playing American Girl Bingo!
At the end of the night I had a little goody bag for each of them. I wanted to have a Swedish theme to the party since we are studying Kirsten next. So I went to IKEA and got the napkins, candles and little paper cones to use for the goody bags. In the cones each girl got 2 little Swedish straw ornaments, candy, and eraser and pencil.
You can see the cones in the picture below behind my daughter. (Doesn't she look cute in her new Christmas dress?)
After all the games and activities I had planned were over the girls wen in the family roomand played duck-duck-goose.
It was a very fun night and a great start to the Christmas season!
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Thank God for dirty dishes; They have a tale to tell.
While others may go hungry, We're eating very well.
With home, health, and happiness,
I shouldn't want to fuss;
By the stack of evidence, God's been very good to us.
Author Unknown
My mom reminded me of this poem yesterday when I was less than enthusiastic about cleaning up the kitchen after Thanksgiving dinner. My paternal Grandmother has this hanging in her kitchen when I was a child. I think I will type it up and frame it for my kitchen too!
This month I decided to write down one thing each day that I am thankful for. It has been an interesting experience. What I have learned is that the "things" I am most thankful for are not "things" at all. They are mostly people, relationships and blessings. Here is the bulk of my list. Some are more private things that I didn't want to share with the whole world. :^)
Today I am thankful for my family. What a wonderful husband and children I have been blessed with.
Today I am thankful for my dog Elvis. He is so loving and devoted to me. A consistent reminder of how I want to love God and others.
Today I am thankful for freedom. God bless all the veterans past and present who have sacrificed to give us freedom. God bless America!
Today I am thankful for our church home. Wow, what an awesome church home God has blessed us with! A place where we can serve, as well as be served. A place for friendship, encouragement and deep commitment to spreading God's Word.
Today I am thankful for homeschooling. What a blessing homeschooling has been to our family! I know that the time and energy I have invested in my kids will pay back dividends their entire lives!
Today I am thankful for all my homeschool mom friends. Each of you have encouraged, supported and loved me on my homeschool journey. You are each a blessing to me!
Today I am thankful for my husbands job. He enjoys the work and the people he works with. The kids and I enjoy that he has nights and weekends off. (Something we missed A LOT the 6 years at his last job.) It's a winning combination for a happy home!
Today I am thankful for AWANA. Our family has been involved in AWANA for 13 years, in 3 States at 7 churches. Each and every one has been a place that has brought us closer to God. Over the years we have hid His Word in our hearts, made friends and found a place to serve others through AWANA. What a blessing!
Today I am thankful for my new house! It's been 6 weeks since we got the keys and 4 weeks since we spent our first night here and it totally feels like home. :^)
Today I am thankful for my job at The Old Schoolhouse Magazine. I get paid to write, which is a dream come true for me. I get to write about homeschooling, which I love. I get to work my own hours, from home, with my kids underfoot. It's a win-win!
Today I am thankful for our new homeschool parent support ministry at church. My friend and I started it this year. I have been so blessed to get to know and grow with so many great homeschool parents. I am especially thankful for my friend who is my ministry partner in both Awana and the new homeschool group. She is an amazing blessing to me!
Today I am thankful for our friends M, A, I and C. It has been so great having "old" friends in a new place! Getting to be close to our "nephews" has been wonderful! I am so glad to have adopted family close by. :^)
Today I am thankful that my mom taught me to sew when I was young. I love to sew. Sewing relaxes me. Being able to save money making or fixing things instead of buying new has been a great blessing to our family over the years. :^)
Today I am Thankful that my mom arrives this afternoon to spend Thanksgiving week with us. I have some excited kids on my hands!
Today I am thankful for my parents and my sister. :^)
Today I am thankful for my "PAMily". You know who you are! ;^)
Today I am thankful for my blog. It is a blessing to me as a creative outlet as well as a place to connect with other homeschoolers all over the world.
Today I am thankful for my American Girls! (And their mom's.) American Girl Club has been such a blessing to me. I look forward to learning American history with my girls for a long time to come!
Today I am thankful for John 3:16! "For God so loved the world that He gave his one and only son that whoever believes in Him will no perish but have ever lasting life." The ultimate free gift!
I pray that each and every one of you have an equally wonderful list of blessings!
One of my friends made this for our Pumpkin Party earlier in the month. It was SO yummy I had to get her recipe. I am hoping to make this today to share with my mom who arrived yesterday to spend Thanksgiving week with us. :^)
Pumpkin Dump Cake
1 can pumpkin (29 oz.)
1 C sugar
1 can evaporated milk (12 oz.)
3 eggs
1 box yellow cake mix
4 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 C melted butter
1 C chopped pecans
Combine pumpkin, sugar, evap. milk, eggs, spices, and salt in mixing bowl. Beat well. Pour into greased and floured 9x13 glass pan. Sprinkle cake mix evenly over mixture. Sprinkle the pecans over the cake mix. Pour melted butter over all. Bake at 350 for 50-60 minutes. Watch closely, burns easily. (Knife inserted in the middle of cake should come out clean when done.)
If you are looking for a new yummy Thanksgiving recipe you might want to give this one a try!
Our First Thanksgiving Dinner was Friday and it was AWESOME! We had 40 kids from 18 families attend for a total of 60 people in attendance. (Just a few more than the 53 Pilgrims at the first Thanksgiving!)
Here is the day in pictures...
Here I am with my 2 youngest. (Oh, come on you knew you would see me dressed like a Pilgrim at some point! LOL My costume was just a black shirt and skirt I had in my closet. Then I wore one of the hats I had made and added a collar and apron made from white felt. Super simple!)
Here are some of the Indians and Pilgrims arrving.
My handsome Indian teenager! His shirt is a white t-shirt we tea stained and then fringed the edges with scissors. It was super easy! (I boiled about a gallon of water and then seeped 7 tea bags until it was pretty dark. Then I removed the tea bags and soaked the shirt for about 30 minutes. Then I put the t-shirt through the spin cycle of the washer and ran it through the dryer. Once it was dry we fringed the edges with scissors. You could add beads too.)
After everyone arrived and got their hats on I spent a few minutes talking to the kids about the first Thanksgiving. Here are some of the kids listening to me talk. I asked them lots of questions too so they all got to tell what they know about the first thanksgiving.
Here is my daughter reciting a poem she memorized as the blessing for the food.
The First Thanksgiving
When the Pilgrims
first gathered together to share
with their Indian friends
in the mild autumn air,
they lifted the voices
in jubilant praise
for the bread on the table,
the berries and maize,
for field and for forest,
for turkey and deer,
for the bountiful crops
they were blessed with that year.
They were thankful for these
as they feasted away,
and as they were thankful
we're thankful today.
Author Unknown
She did an AWESOME job. I was so proud of her!
The FOOD! We had turkey, fish, deer stew, fruit, nuts, cheese, corn chowder, potatoes, cranberry salad, apple sauce, and a lot more! Yummy!!!!
Pilgrims and Indians eating together.
Lots of yummy food!
We also played games. Here are a few of the pilgrim girls heading out to play games.
And my WILD Indian boy!
3 Legged Races!
Corn Toss
The Turkey Shoot!
There was also a corn hunt (Similar to a egg hunt except dry corn was thrown in the grass and everyone hunted for it.) and pumpkin races where the kids pushed a pumpkin with a stick, The games were great!
And lastly we made our craft (Which the kids LOVED and I didn't get any pictures of.) and then played Thanksgiving Jingo!
It was an awesome day. I can't wait to do it again next year!
Happy Homeschooling,
Jamin
Click HERE to read my post on planning out this party. :^)
This Friday our homeschool group is having a First Thanksgiving Dinner. I am SO excited because this is something I have wanted to do with my kids for years! As you can see above my littles are ready to go! My little man is SO, SO excited about getting to dress up as an Indian! (Can you tell from the picture?)
So here is the plan for the dinner.
Everyone has been invited to come dressed as either an Indian or a Pilgrim. For kids who don't come dressed we will provide either a Pilgrim hat or Indian headband made from felt. (If all the kids come dressed the mom's will get to wear the hats we provide!)
Here are the instructions for the hats we will be providing:
We will also be eating without forks for pepper because those were not used at the first Thanksgiving. (Spoons and knives were used and pepper was cooked into food but not used on the table.) Desserts will be served right along with the other food, not at the end of the meal because that is how it was done in the 1600's. Of course their desserts would not have been sweet since they didn't have sugar! (I am betting our pies will have sugar! LOL)
I am also hoping to have the kids make a Wampanoag Toss and Catch Game to take home and play with. Yesterday I spent the day making 72 hats so if I can catch my breath after that I will work on collecting the materials for these.
The other night my daughter came to me with her Awana book and said "It says in here that in the 60's the Astronauts read from the book of Genesis on Christmas Eve from the Moon. Is that true or something Awana just made up?" I happened to be sitting at the computer so I played this for her...
I am assuming I don't remember this from the original airing since I was only 3 in 1968! But I do remember hearing it before. It is quite touching to listen to and somewhat sad to think about how much our world has changed in the last 40 years. I can't imagine something like this happening today and obviously neither could my daughter since she thought they had made it up for Awana.
I am praying for a revival for America! How awesome it would be to NOT be surprised to hear prayer in this country! How wonderful it would be for my children and grandchildren to live in an America that honored the one true God! Please join me in praying for our country.
On Oct. 1st the kids and I were in the car headed to the pumpkin patch! They were all dressed in fall t-shirts and I was ready to take some great pictures! Then it started raining...I pulled over and made a few quick calls to the homeschool friends we were suppose to meet. We all decided to go another day. Little did we know it was going to rain for 30 days straight! (I am exaggerating a little here, but honestly this is the wettest Oct. I have seen in my life!) Meanwhile we were in the middle of moving. The rain meant we were moving in the mud and the last thing I wanted to do was trek out into a pumpkin patch and collect even more mud. As the month headed to a close I started to realize a trip to the pumpkin patch was not going to happen. So I did the next logical thing...I decided to have a Pumpkin Party! LOL
What is a Pumpkin Party??? Honestly it's something I made up. But, we had our first one on Nov. 2nd with 97 people in attendance! Thankfully the rain finally stopped and we found a park with lots of concrete to keep us out of the mud. The party was a huge success and a LOT of fun! Here are the highlights....
We started out with the kids each decorating a pumpkin cookie.
Then they ate their cookies while waiting for the pumpkin story to start.
Next we listened to the Pumpkin Gospel You can read all about the story at the link below http://ginaconroy.com/ginablog/wordpress/2007/10/30/the-pumpkin-gospel/
Then we played pumpkin games!
Pumpkin Parachute Game. I got a package of Fun Foam Pumpkin and made a smiley face on one with a marker. Then they would put all the pumpkins in the parachute, throw them up in the air and the person who found the smiley face got a piece of candy. Repeat until everyone wins!
We also had Pumpkin Hot Potato.
And we had Pumpkin Relay Races!
We finished off the party with lots and lots of pumpkin food! Everyone brought a pumpkin dish to share. We had pies, breads, cakes, cookies, pumpkin dip. The food was amazing!
It was a great day and I am sure we will have many more pumpkin parties in the future.
We have homeschooled our children from the start and we love every minute of it! This is my place to share my thoughts on homeschooling, my kids and living for the Lord. All the while being a little outside the box!!
Copyright 2007 jaminacema. All Rights Reserved.
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"For the wages of sin is death,
but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Romans 6:23
"For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life." John 3:16
"I have come that they may have life,
and have it to the full." John 10:10
Click below to hear GREAT Sermons, from an awesome Pastor I love!
Want to further investigate the claims of Jesus CLICK HERE
For Video Podcasts from Lee Strobel
An extremely dense, vertically developed cumulus with a relatively hazy outline and a glaciated top extending to great heights, usually producing heavy rains, thunderstorms, or hailstorms.
:^)
These are made with air dry clay. Super simple. Just make coils and roll them into a pot! These were lots of fun. I also provided glass beads for the girls to decorate their pots with.
For this craft I cut up the larger brooms I got at the dollar store to make the smaller ones! LOL Our finished brooms were the type of brooms (right side) that Josefina would have used not only to sweep the floor but to comb her hair too! The girls had fun combing each others hair when they finished these.
In one of the books when Josefina's aunt comes to visit she tells them about the memory book she keeps to help her remember their mama who died a year earlier. To make our book we used brown craft paper for the cover. The girls colored a picture on it and then we crumpled them up to make them look old. We folded over white paper for the inside and held it all together with yarn.
Since the brooms took about 2 minutes to make we had extra time. So I printed out a map to mark where Josefina lived and then some worksheets about New Mexico. We will add pages for each of the girls as we study them.
I made custom cards here: 
This one I printed out here: 
The directions to make the angel above are here:
Here is what is written on the Candy Cane one. 
His shirt is a white t-shirt we tea stained and then fringed the edges with scissors. It was super easy! (I boiled about a gallon of water and then seeped 7 tea bags until it was pretty dark. Then I removed the tea bags and soaked the shirt for about 30 minutes. Then I put the t-shirt through the spin cycle of the washer and ran it through the dryer. Once it was dry we fringed the edges with scissors. You could add beads too.)
I asked them lots of questions too so they all got to tell what they know about the first thanksgiving.
We had turkey, fish, deer stew, fruit, nuts, cheese, corn chowder, potatoes, cranberry salad, apple sauce, and a lot more! Yummy!!!!
Boys Pilgrim Hat:
Girl Pilgrim Hat:
Indian Headband:
You can read all about the story at the link below
I got a package of Fun Foam Pumpkin and made a smiley face on one with a marker. Then they would put all the pumpkins in the parachute, throw them up in the air and the person who found the smiley face got a piece of candy. Repeat until everyone wins!
The kids loved this! I got the idea here: 
