Snowmen

I live with the terrible guilt of constantly doing cool crafts with my students, but never doing anything with Clara and Trevor.  So today, our December activity from the House was snowman-making.  We made these huggable little sock snowmen/snowwomen in class last week, and I had a couple of tube socks and a bunch of felt left over.  I really should do this kind of thing more often.  It's certainly easier to pull it off with two kids, as opposed to 22.

Trevi gave "Snowy" a piggyback to bed.  Hopefully we won't find a puddle in the morning. 

The Kindergarten Show

Tonight, Trevor got to be the performer while his proud sister watched.  The entire Kindergarten class filled the stage, and sung song after song with real, live, piano accompaniment!  (One of my top ten pet peeves is the Sing-Along-With-A-Raffi-CD kind of kid concert. No offense, Raffi, but I'd rather hear the kids. )  I filmed the whole thing, but my video camera is still arguing with me.  Take my word that it was lovely and joyful.  Great job, Manny!

The House

One thing I've always wanted to do is have an Advent Calendar of sorts that is filled with 25 activities we could do together as a family in December.  Originally, I planned to sew or build or somehow create my own calendar, but, when that didn't seem to be happening, I went the consumer route and bought this cute house.  Behind each door is a slip of paper with our special activity for the day.  I put all kinds of stuff in there – walks and drives to look at lights, baking, card-making, crafty stuff, and even a Christmas movie or two.  One of the things I love about this little system is that it forces me to follow through with the activities, no matter how much grading or shopping or laundry I have to do.  Family comes first.  I should probably get one of these puppies for every month of the year.