Christmas

I am not a crafty person, although I do wish I was. But I do have a hankering to do some crafting around this time of year. Pinterest is a great place to find ideas along with your favorite blogs. Here are a few things I am contemplating...

 

This one is from my favorite blogger, Joy at artfulhomemaking. You can go HERE if you would like to see how she made this beautiful plate for next to nothing. She also has some other great printables as well. I used THIS printable on some brown paper colored cardstock and put it in a black frame. Such an easy and beautiful way to add Scripture to your home.

 

For our Advent calendar this year I am making THIS. I will modify it though and just use posterboard for the backing instead of fabric. I don't mind if it isn't reusable since I enjoy finding something different each year.

 

I also picked up three fake silver platters from the Dollar Tree to make THIS. I just love anything that is chalkboard. I got a can of chalkboard paint for my birthday that I have been trying to find projects for.

 

Anyway, those are a few projects I am hoping to work on and that is about all that baby is going to let me write.

 

Happy Christmas Crafting!

 

 

 

 

 

Before Five in a Row

Yes, the school year has been in full swing for quite some time and yes I did buy a whole new curriculum for my Kindergartener at the beginning of the year and yes I started something else in the middle of the school year. I think I drive my husband crazy but hopefully for the rest of this year I am set on one thing. As I was "schooling" with him I just felt that we were just doing things for the sake of doing things and he didn't seem to be retaining much of it. I really just wanted to be sitting on the floor reading to all of my little ones.

Then I read a post at one of my favorite blogs, Artful Homemaking. She had a post on the fun they were having using "Before Five in a Row". It had all of the elements that I wanted to do with the children...reading, art, and fun. Then I remembered, "I have the teacher book for that".  So we are now using a fun curriculum, if you want to call it that.

Basically we read the same children's book for five days in a row and do some fun, learning activities to reinforce our reading. Our first book was "Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear?"

 

Our first activity was dressing Jesse Bear.

 

B#8 wasn't really he wanted anything to do with it all but once he saw the book he was excited to read it. Then when I told him we were going to the table to do an activity he politely declined. Once he saw the activity he jumped on board and wanted to keep dressing more bears.

 

 

We are having fun with it and I love how flexible it is. I just find activities on the internet that I want to do and print them out or prepare them.