This Week in School, Letter I and Christmas Theme

This week we were easing back into school after the Thanksgiving break. Everytime we have a break I find I have a hard time getting motivated. We have a few weeks until Christmas break so I am hoping that we can get a good start before Christmas break!

Preschool
This week we studied the letter I. My daughter did not have quite as many letter associated activities as I would normally have for her. She did Do A Dot for the Letter I and Getting Ready for I from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

Bins
She also had many Christmas themed bins this week.

Sorting Christmas erasers

Tonging Christmas bows (from Counting Coconuts)

Matching Shapes to Flashcards and a Christmas peg in the hole game

"Felt Friends" (from Counting Counting Coconuts)

Beading Jingle Bells and a puzzle

Other Christmas Themed Activities

In addition to our Christmas themed bins we also started our Christmas sensory box and our Jesse Advent Tree. Please see the post for the sensory box here and the Advent Tree here.

Next week we will be studying the letter J and adding additional Christmas activities.

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Our Christmas Advent Activities

This year I decided to do a special advent activity every day with the kids (besides the chocolate) so we could talk about the real meaning of Christmas. I have replaced our normally daily Bible lessons with the How to Celebrate Advent with a Jesse Tree ebook from Feels Like Home. I love the daily lessons since they are very appropriate for young children. Each day you have a verse, a song, a scripture and an ornament that corresponds to the daily theme. In order to use the book you need a tree and ornaments. I printed mine from A Holy Experience and glued them to red and green paper and then laminated them for durablity.


The kids have been enjoying this acitivity and I know that they are learning the true meaning behind Christmas.

Allergy Friendly Advent Calendars

As a child I have great memories of using an advent calendar to countdown to Christmas. My mom would always buy both myself and my sister a chocolate advent calendar. All three of my children have food allergies so this is the first year I have done a chocolate advent calendar. I checked into food allergy friendly advent calendars last year for my oldest who was at that time still allergic to milk, but found them to be pretty expensive. This year my older son is no longer allergic to milk. So I purchased two advent calendars for my son and daughter, however my little guy T is still allergic to milk, eggs, peanuts and treenuts and is at the age where he realizes that they are getting something he is not. So I came up with a solution so everyone could enjoy an advent calendar. I saved an old advent calendar and carefully seperated the inner candy mold from the outer cardboard section.

I thoroughly cleaned the mold and dried it. Then I melted Enjoy Life Chocolate chips in a plastic bag and snipped the corner and filled each section with chocolate.

I stuck it in the refrigerator for about a half hour and then put it back in the outer section and taped it back together.

Now my little guy will not know that his advent calendar is any different and he can participate with everyone else!

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