One

Today our baby turned one. Where has this year gone?

The older children opening Elisabeth's presents, while she enjoys playing with a balloon!

To celebrate her birthday, and Abigail's upcoming 4th birthday, we had a very special breakfast at Krispy Kreme Doughnuts.

Can you spot who's got glasses?

 Then we went onto the Sea Life Centre in Manchester, a birthday present from Granny. We managed to book in advance and get a big reduction in ticket prices as we are home educators. 

We all thoroughly enjoyed  our time there and it linked in very well with our current science unit on water.

The children were especially fascinated with the jellyfish, after the project they had worked on earlier this year.

We then had a quick trip into the neighbouring Trafford Centre to enjoy the mock Ancient Egyptian architecture, to tie in with our current history topic.

And here is a short clip of the birthday girl walking.

Happy Birthday Bis, we are very blessed. 

"Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord:

 and the fruit of the womb is his reward." Psalm 127:3

Water Absorbency

As part of our current science unit on water, we had a lot of  fun testing the absorbency of different materials. 

I chose a range of papers and fabric from around the home and the children tried to predict whether the material would absorb the water or not.Then we poured 10 ml of water on each one, watched and waited,

and recorded the results in a table.

The children thoroughly enjoyed testing the absorbency of one of Elisabeth's disposable nappies. We were amazed to learn that it could hold 600 ml of water!

They had fun playing with water beads, which start off really tiny and expand in size when put in water.

We reminded ourselves of what we had learned in our spring project, about how plants absorb water through their roots, and they drew and labelled a flower and made note that plants need water, sunlight and soil to grow.

Whilst out on a lovely winter walk, we found a great example of a tree with some of its roots exposed. We talked about how God designed the roots of a tree to hold it up and take in water and nutrients.

Finally we have left some celery stalks in water and food colouring and we are hoping that we will be able to see how the water has been absorbed into the stalks and up the stem. 

Christmas Crafts - Felt Trees

Another simple sewing project for children... 

...felt Christmas trees.

Cut the shapes out of felt and sew on lots of buttons!

Stitch together with a running stitch and add some wadding and a ribbon hoop to hang.

Christmas Crafts - Lollipop Stick Stars

To make these stars, glue together 4 fat lollipop sticks in a star shape with PVA glue and add a loop of ribbon. 

When dry, glue on lots and lots of buttons! Really simple for little ones to make. 

"When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy.

And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, 

they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense and myrrh."

Matthew 2:10-11

Christmas Crafts - Christmas Cards

This year I decided to give the children free choice as to how to decorate their Christmas cards. I provided them with stickers and bits and pieces to stick on.

As inserts to the card, Nathanael made some Christmas wordles. Wordle generates “word clouds” from text that you type in.We shrunk them to size and printed them off.

The children wrote their Christmas messages onto plain white stickers which will be stuck into the cards. I have found this to be an effective method in preventing young children making mistakes and spoiling a card!

Water Wheels

We had an interesting and enjoyable day out recently at Quarry Bank Mill where we found out about the cottage industry and how cotton was spun and woven into fabric. 

We saw water and steam power in action

and enjoyed viewing the most powerful, working water wheel in Europe!

We then made our own simple water wheel at home following these instructions...

...and here is it in action!  Please excuse the drying dishes!

Christmas Crafts - Robins

 

Today the children spent some time drawing and painting in watercolours onto the front of blank Christmas cards. We got photos up on the iPad of robins, one of our favourite birds. They tried their best to copy exactly what they saw.

The finished cards...

Using this pattern we sewed some...

...felt robin decorations

and Abigail sewed a robin for a Christmas gift for her Great Granny, framed in an embroidery hoop.

Christmas Crafts - Nativity Sun Catcher

Nathanael was keen to take down our autumn leaves sun catchers and replace them with something a bit more festive so we decided to make some nativity ones.
 I cut a silhouette out of black paper 

and placed it onto sticky back plastic so that when then the children ripped different coloured tissue paper pieces they were able to stick directly onto the background.

So simple to make, but what a lovely reminder in our kitchen of the true meaning of Christmas. 

"Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; 

Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, 

and shall call his name Immanuel."

Isaiah 7:14

Christmas Crafts - Felt Gingerbread Men

Whilst out shopping, the children spotted gingerbread Christmas tree decorations made from felt. We decided to have a go at making them ourselves. We drew around our gingerbread man cutter with a marker pen onto some brown felt and then cut out the shapes. 



Each child chose their buttons and beads and sewed them on.

The shapes were stitched around in running stitch, stuffed with wadding and a loop of gold ribbon sewed into them.

My 5 and 6 year olds really enjoyed this activity and sewed them all by themselves, apart from needing a little help rethreading needles, and it took them about 20 minutes in total. Because the decorations are only about 15cm tall we are planning to pop them in as small gifts with some of our Christmas cards.

Christmas Crafts - Clay Stars

Using air drying clay, the children cut out some star shapes. Into them they pressed buttons of their choice and made a hole with a pencil for a ribbon to be threaded through at a later stage.



When the clay had dried, they were decorated with a mixture of poster paint and PVA glue.

A gold ribbon through the top enables the decorations to be hung.



"Where is he that is born King of the Jews?

for we have seen his star in the east,

and are come to worship him."

Matthew 2:2

Christmas Crafts - Bible Verses

Over the month of December, I am endeavouring to do a post a day on a Christmas art and craft project we have completed. To start this blog series, we have made some Bible verses to decorate the house and to focus our minds upon the real reason we celebrate Christmas.

I got the idea from here and here are the instructions as to how we did it.