Christmas planning

I know Christmas is still a long way off, but we’re not American so no Thanksgiving – the Swiss have been having small harvest celebrations for several weeks now, they seem to stagger them so everyone can go to everyone else’s village celebrations – and Switzerland doesn’t really do Halloween as such (they save the dressing-up for Carnival time in February) and so Advent and Christmas are the Next Big Thing.

For Froglet’s Advent bags this year I’ve bought some of those little cylindrical plastic beads that you make a picture with and then iron together, and I will do some designs for small baubles to make with them, probably while Nutmeg sleeps after lunch.

I have also got a 10-week preparation list from Planning with Kids, where there is going to be more about it each week so do click through!

• 10 Weeks To Go – Review Christmas budget
• 9 Weeks To Go – Start making the family Christmas cards
• 8 Weeks To Go – Make food packs to donate
• 7 Weeks To Go – Christmas present ideas (ones that are easy to pack)
• 6 Weeks To Go – Help my kids organise a mini fundraiser
• 5 Weeks To Go – Finish Christmas tags and handmade gifts
• 4 Weeks To Go – Handmade Christmas decorations
• 3 Weeks To Go – Cooking Christmas treats
• 2 Weeks To Go – Make arrangements for the house
• 1 Week To Go – Christmas celebration with family before we go

I have to say I am very intrigued to find out what some of them will be (a mini-fundraiser for what?), and intend to use the list as a basis for making my own plans. I’m cutting out the fundraiser as my eldest is currently 5, but it’s an interesting thought for future years. And we wouldn’t know who to give food packets to so unless we manage to find out before Christmas, that’s getting replaced with Christmas parcels to send to Eastern Europe.

Here (for my own benefit more than anyone else’s) are the posts I made concerning Advent and preparing for Christmas last year:

http://notreallyhomeschooling.blogspot.com/2009/11/planning-advent.html (this one has links in it to the Jesse Tree stuff)
http://notreallyhomeschooling.blogspot.com/2009/12/advent-week-1.html
http://notreallyhomeschooling.blogspot.com/2009/12/second-week-of-advent.html

Lent Bible readings for kids

Haven’t had chance to blog for a while. Life takes over…

Nonetheless, I wanted to write a bit abut what we’re doing for Lent. We haven’t given anything up (although I am working on giving up shouting at the children!) but rather we have picked something up: Bible reading. I’ve never felt like Froglet could really follow the Bible itself, although of course we have Bible story books. But since we enjoyed having daily readings over Advent, I thought we’d have daily readings for Lent too. These are (mostly) from the Gospel of Luke. I tried to pick stories and things Jesus did rather than too many of the straight teachings, because Froglet is, after all, only four. On Sundays we’re reading the bits where Jesus talked about his death. We have a great illustrated book that was also mine as a child, published by Ladybird, and called The Easter Story. Froglet loves it. As he already knows about the death and resurrection, I thought it was worth showing him that Jesus knew this was coming. But you could easily just leave out the Sunday readings (or replace them), as they aren’t in chronological order with the rest anyway.

We are reading these out of a copy of the Good News Bible which was mine when I was small – it has more pictures than my NIV, although not many, and the wording is a bit simpler.

Today (Wednesday) is day 25. Sundays aren’t counted in the 40 days of Lent so I haven’t numbered them.

Day 1: John the Baptist – Lk 3:2-22
Day 2: In the desert – Lk 4:1-15
Day 3: Nazareth – Lk 4: 16-30
Day 4: Lk 4: 31-44
1st Sunday: Who am I – Lk 9: 18-27
5: Calling the disciples – Mtt 4:18-22 and Lk 5:27-31
6: Skin-disease – Lk 5:12-16
7: Paralysis – Lk 5: 17-26
8: The Sabbath – Lk 6: 1-11
9: The Apostles – Lk 6: 12-19
10: Love your enemies – Lk 6: 27-36
2nd Sunday: The transfiguration – Lk 9: 37-43
11: The house on the rock – Lk 6:46-49
12: The Roman officer – Lk 7: 1-10
13: Raising the dead – Lk 7:11-23
14: Forgiving sins – Lk 7:36-50
15: The parable of the sower – Lk 8:4-15
16: The storm – Lk 8:22-25
3rd Sunday: Predicting Jesus’ death – Lk 18: 31-34
17: Jairus’ daughter – Lk 8:40-56
18: Feeding the 5000 – Lk 9:10-17
19: The boy with an evil spirit – Lk 9: 37-43
20: Sending out the 72 – Lk 10:1-11, 16-20
21: The Samaritan woman – Lk 10:25-37
22: Martha – Lk 10: 38-42
4th Sunday: The tenants in the vineyard – Lk 20:9-18
23: Prayer – Lk 11:1-13
24: Don’t worry – Lk 12:13-31
25: Healing on the Sabbath – Lk 13:10-17, 14:1-6
26: The lost sheep – Lk 15: 1-7
27: The lost coin – Lk 15:8-10
28: The lost son – Lk 15:11-32
5th Sunday: the rich man and Lazarus – Lk 16:19-31
29: Forgiveness – Lk 17:3-4
30: Healing the ten lepers – Lk 17:11-19
31: Always pray – Lk 18:1-8
32: Pharisee and tax collector – Lk 18:9-14
33: Children – Lk 18:15-17
34: Rich man / widow – Lk 18:18-27, 21:1-4
Palm Sunday: Entering Jerusalem – Lk 19:28-40
35: The blind beggar – Lk 18:35-43
36: Zacchaeus – Lk 19:1-10
37: Parable of the talents – Lk 19:11-26
38: Passover meal – Lk 22:1-23, 31-34
39 (Good Friday): Arrest and death – Lk 23 (I will use the afore-mentioned book here)
40: Burial – Lk 23:50-56
Easter Sunday: the Resurrection – Lk 24 (book again)

Happiness is…

Watching my four-year-old chase my just-turned-one-year old so he can snuggle her, then seeing her turn round and throw her arms round his neck delightedly.

Snow sparkling in the lamplight outside our bathroom window.

Time to do lots of reading (most recently John Ortberg “Everyone’s normal till you get to know them”)

Nutmeg having her check-up and MMR jab without crying or complaining at all, then waving her cookie happily at the doctor afterwards, as if he hadn’t just stuck a needle in her arm.

Froglet finding words for me to help him read wherever we go.

Lying on the floor with a happily-squeaking Nutmeg crawling all over me.

Froglet stroking my arm and saying “I love you Mummy”.

Nutmeg wandering about saying “yeah, yeah” and “oo-ah-oo”. If she says it fast enough, it sounds like wow.

Getting a little box to store paperclips in, complete with paperclips, as a free gift from the pharmacy. I’m always short of paperclips.

Watching Nutmeg dance to the strains of Cuban music.

Nutmeg following Froglet wherever he goes.

An elder brother’s love for his baby sister: “She is my little sister, Mummy. Don’t smack her.”
(For the record, I had no intention of smacking her. I must have looked like I was gearing up to it though!)

Going to our first German-language parent-teachers’ meeting to find out what school will be like for Froglet when he starts in mid-August. Evidently it will be wonderful. The Swiss are remarkably Waldorf in their attitude to education. (In fact the school down in our cantonal capital is named after Pestalozzi, who once worked in the canton).

Advent week 3

December 13th: Today’s activity is meant to be a visit to the Christmas market in our village, but due to the pox we probably shouldn’t be going out. This morning we caught up on Jesse Tree ornaments, and after lunch we will hang them all up and read the appropriate passages again as we do so. No church today, again due to the chickenpox.

Second Week of Advent

December 6th, second Sunday of Advent. We’re supposed to be making angels but have skipped it due to not finishing the trees yet. But St Nicolas came today and brought a Wii Fit Plus (just the CD-rom, as we already have the basic Wii Fit), which everyone was very pleased about. We particularly like the game where you flap your arms to fly like a bird. I found a whole new set of muscles in my arms!

December 7th. Today Froglet’s nursery is being visited by the saint too. He usually brings such items as satsumas, peanuts and cookies (I think I’ve mentioned this before)

December 8th. The Ten commandments are today’s Jesse Tree reading. Time to learn a new memory verse (the last one was Genesis 1:1) – obey your mother and father!

December 9th The Engineer is ill this week so not much is happening. We will have to catch up on making the Jesse Tree ornaments this weekend, but are still having the readings every day. Froglet is very much enjoying them although I think he often doesn’t understand.

December 12th. We have chickenpox! But that is not stopping us in the slightest as Froglet only has it mildly. The Engineer helped me paint the kids’ hands and feet to make hand-foot angels which we were supposed to do ages ago and didn’t get round to. I still have to cut them out and stick them together.

Advent week 1

Please forgive the lack of photos. Our old computer died and the new one is a Mac… needless to say, I have not yet worked out how to move the photos onto it from the camera, or how to find them once they have been moved, let alone put them on the blog! A task to add to this weekend’s list.

November 29th, first Sunday of Advent, we put up our tree. Nice and high so Nutmeg can’t get at it! Although the baubles are mostly child-safe (papier-maché). Froglet helped decorate the lower branches, while Nutmeg tried to eat everything within reach.

November 30th, first Monday of Advent, we started the Jesse Tree. There are some nice family devotions over at rca.org. We have brought the potted kumquat tree in off the balcony to use as the Tree. It’s a bit big for the table but otherwise perfect. Kumquats do badly on their own stock so they tend to be grafted onto some other citrus fruit tree – meaning that there is a clear stump with the kumquat branch growing from it. Almost ideal for a Jesse Tree… of course Christ was not grafted onto Jesse’s stock, but we gentiles are grafted into His family!

December 1st. No activity because Froglet goes to nursery all day on Tuesdays, which wears him out. We just did the reading, having coloured in the bauble the previous day. And I hung up his advent calendar. Photos may follow…

December 2nd. The story of Noah. Froglet is mildly obsessed with floods. Every time it rains he asks if there will be one (the last one we saw was the summer before his birth!) so he’s fascinated by Noah. I make sure to stress God’s promise that no flood will ever wipe out humanity again! We also tried to make Christmas cards by painting paper and then using a cardboard comb to make designs in it. Not hugely successful so we settled for painting on the table, drawing in it with our fingers and making prints from that instead.

December 3rd. Today’s activity is one from my to-do list (over there in the sidebar): paper plate Christmas trees. What with waiting for the paint to dry and Froglet not feeling like doing crafts, we haven’t managed to finish these yet!

December 4th – finish trees *cough* or not.

December 5th. Story of Isaac. Not a very pleasant story! I have another post on this coming.

Planning Advent

…is one of the many reasons I have been so very absent this month.

I love Advent. As a child it was a really special time. We had a list of special things that would be done together, one for each day in Advent, pinned up on the fridge where we could all see it. We got to suggest meals we wanted to eat during that time (I guess we could have done this at other times too, perhaps it didn’t occur to us!)
Very simple things, like having hot chocolate with candy canes – candy canes are more special if you don’t live in the States I think. Or decorating the Christmas tree. Or going to a Christmas market – often the one in the centre of Brussels, where we lived, but sometimes a trip to nearby Germany.
During Advent the classical music that was a staple of our background noise – at least when my dad was in – was replaced with lovely Christmas carols. Not that I don’t love classical too, but Christmas carols are wonderful! I have no idea how many CDs of them we must have had. I now have four of my own.

So of course I want Advent to be special for our little ones too. Last year I looked all over the blogosphere for someone who might have laid out a plan of Bible verses and so on to go through in Advent. Couldn’t find anything at all. This year, quite by accident, I came upon Hubbards Cupboard, where they have exactly that. Unfortunately it doesn’t quite match the order I had in mind, and some days rely on various books we don’t have and have no access to, but I was thinking it was pretty good anyway, until I came across something even better:

The Jesse Tree
Jesse tree family devotions

The tree is such a lovely idea, one new decoration each day, each one reminding you of that day’s scripture as it leads you gradually through the Old Testament showing God’s faithfulness and anticipating the promised Messiah. I’m surprised I haven’t come across the concept before, being interested in traditions and also having lived mostly in parts of Europe where Catholicism is the predominant branch of the Church, but thrilled to make a new discovery. Check out the links if you’ve not come across it before either.

I still want to do the other special things for Advent too though. Here’s what we did last year, when Froglet was three:

Day 1: Light Advent candle 1, Put up tree
Day 2: Make red postbox (to keep cards in), make cards
Day 3: “We 3 kings” song, wise men story from Bible stories book
Day 4: Make a star for the door
Day 5: learn “O Christmas Tree”
Days 6-9: No activity (in UK for weekend)
Day 10: Light Advent candle 2, Christmas story with donkey
Day 11: Bake scones, have cream tea
Day 12: Put up nativity scene minus shepherds
Day 13: “Deck the halls” song
Day 14: Open red postbox and hang up cards
Day 15: Light Advent candle 3, Christmas party with Froglet’s godparents
Day 16: Shepherds’ story, “While shepherds watched”
Day 17: Add shepherds to scene
Day 18: Wrap gifts, “we wish you a merry Christmas”
Day 19: Make gingerbread for house
Day 20: Decorate gingerbread house
Day 21: Froglet to nursery for special Christmas crafts morning, “Silent Night”
Day 22: Light advent candle 4, add Jesus to scene
Day 23: “Away in a manger”
Day 24: To Brussels for Christmas with grandparents

Each of these activities was written down on a slip of paper which I read out to him in the morning when he opened his advent bag containing the paper and a chocolate coin or small gift. We bought a small box of Lego bits and divided them up between some of the bags, which was a big hit, but we’re not doing it this year. He has so much Lego already!

To finish with, here are some more links. Use Advent Celebrations to teach Patience by Maren Schmidt, whose Montessori blog/column I enjoy very much.
And What are we waiting for this Advent, which is the start of a series hosted by Christine Sine over at Godspace. Enjoy!

MTM – Bonfire Night

Remember, remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder treason and plot
I see no reason why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.

We had our muffin tin on Friday to celebrate Bonfire Night. Which was actually on Thursday, but never mind. Bonfire Night is when the English, and presumably the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish as well, remember the attempted blowing up of Parliament in 1605. (Story below) Here is our tin:

We have fire-coloured tins containing mung bean sprouts (no reason for these), Yorkshire parkin and custard, marmite on toast “guys” with a chocolate penny, sparklers and cinnamon stars for fireworks. The meaning of these becomes clearer once you know what bonfire night is about!

The brief story is that James the first and his government were very repressive towards Catholics. (And I do mean very). And so some Catholics got rather tired of this and decided that a new government was needed, and they filled a cellar under the Houses of Parliament with gunpowder in barrels, and coal and wood. And they intended to blow it all up at a time when Parliament would be in session on November the 5th. But someone tipped off one of the MPs and they were discovered. Guy Fawkes was the person there at the time and so he was tortured for the names of his friends, which he refused to give. Eventually the conspirators, or at least some of them, were caught and sentenced to an unpleasant death, and King James ordered bonfires to be lit in the streets to celebrate that Parliament (and himself) had been saved. Incidentally, this is the same King James as he of the KJV. Not a very nice person, although he was slightly gentler towards the Catholics in later life.

You might wonder why anyone nowadays would celebrate such an unpleasant happening – an attempted act of terrorism foiled by an equally unpleasant government – and the answer is because it’s traditional. Nowadays everyone has fireworks (for the gunpowder) and a bonfire on Bonfire Night, and pretty much everyone, at least of my age, knows the rhyme above. Children used to make a “Guy” out of old clothes and trundle him round the streets calling out “a penny for the guy” so people would give them some money to buy fireworks. I imagine they may still do this in some places but probably not most. That’s where your word guy meaning a man in general comes from, by the way. 🙂 And parkin is traditionally eaten on bonfire night too, at least in the North.

But I told Froglet the story so we could talk about how when people are cruel to others, sooner or later the others will turn around and do something unpleasant back (in this case I mean James being almost Inquisitional towards the Catholics and them responding by trying to blow him up).

Halloween

I have been seeing so much about pumpkins, dressing up, crafts and other items relating to Halloween recently. Some really cool ideas, others that gross me out – eeew spiders! And although I am a big fan of Harry Potter, I’m not actually so keen on Halloween, especially trick-or-treating. Fortunately we don’t have to do anything much because this holiday isn’t a big deal in Switzerland. We have our main dressing-up-as-monsters event at the start of Lent instead. It’s basically Halloween for a whole week, minus the pumpkins.

But I wanted to join in the fun anyway by linking to this great post by Christine Sine at Godspace, called Getting Ready for Halloween. Whether you believe in celebrating Halloween or really don’t like it at all, she has some interesting thoughts. Here’s a quote to spark your interest:

Today there seems to be more talk about not celebrating Halloween because it has been so taken over by witches, covens and non Christian groups. But is that the right attitude? How could we redeem the celebration of Halloween and return it to the Christian celebration it once was? How can we enter into the joy and celebration of God’s rhythm of feasting and add to the fun rather than trying to kill it?

I may have more thoughts on this later but I have a German lesson to go to and homeschooling to plan. Where do all you homeschooling mothers find time to blog?!

Birthday cake and jelly

(You probably already know that when Brits say jelly they mean jello. But I thought I’d mention it just in case anyone is reading this hoping for a jam-type jelly recipe.)

So yes, we made birthday jellies and birthday cake. Mainly because I really wanted to try out our new jelly mold/muffin tins. And I also wanted a birthday cake, of course. We made Cranham Honey Cake, which involves glacé cherries. I love glacé cherries.

For the jelly we used strawberry jelly with chopped pears – which Froglet said looked like tea when liquid – and then lemon jelly made up with milk, so it looked like custard, and topped it with whipped cream to serve.
Here is a transcript of Froglet telling The Engineer how we made it:

Froglet:
We, um, put the tea in with the hot jelly in and then,
we, um, put the yellow jelly in and um, and it made custard – which is not very good…
and then we… it had to go in the fridge, and we let it (sit) still for hours…
and then we took it out and, um, put the yellow jelly in!

Me:
What about the pears?

Froglet:
Um, and we also put the pears in. I said that before we did the yellow jelly.

Me:
Did you?

Froglet:
Yeah. And then… we ate it! *laughs and takes a mouthful* Mmmmm.

I’m not sure why he said custard wasn’t good. It all tasted great anyway!

And here is the cake recipe, adapted slightly from a lovely little book called English Teatime Recipes:

5 oz margarine
2.5 oz caster sugar
3 generous tbslp thick honey
2 eggs, beaten
8 oz self-raising flour (or plain and 3 tsp baking powder)
Grated rind of one lemon
100 g glacé cherries
pinch of salt
1/4 cup of milk (4 tblsp)

Set oven to 375 F (190 C) – as we have a fan-assisted oven we put it to 175 C.
Grease and flour a 7-inch round cake tin.
Cream the marge, sugar and honey.
Beat in the eggs.
Fold in the flour, salt, cherries and lemon rind.
Add the milk and mix well
Pour into tin and bake for one hour (approx 45 minutes fan-assisted), until golden brown.
Allow to cool in tin before turning out onto rack.

This always comes out nearly black on top when I make it! Just the very top, and it’s still edible, doesn’t taste burnt, just a terribly dark colour. This time it also came out soggy in the middle and it occurred to me that making it in a gugelhupf tin might be a good idea next time, then it would cook through before scorching.

Everyone loved it anyway. The Engineer didn’t even want any jelly, just extra cake!

Check out what everyone else made for Simply Made Sunday this week here.