Advent, Christmas, etc.

Our Grace Journey has the 2009 Inductive Advent study up on the website! Print it now so you are ready for Sunday!

While we have a usable Jesse Tree from HERE (I have blogged about it in the past), I found something that I think Young M and I will work together on for next year (perhaps a set for us and then a set to be made and put away for each child - for when they have their own households). It is a cross-stitched set - what a wonderful heirloom idea (or hope chest!).

We have Bartholomew's Passage ready to go. I just have to go buy our candles for our Advent wreath.

We will also continue our deviation from our regularly scheduled language arts and "reading" curriculum (but keeping up with our history/lit readings from AO) and work on the Christmas Unit Study I bought a couple of years ago from www.unitstudy.com. I also have a freebie lapbook from Hands of a Child that are purely "fun" and not any kind of "educational", lol, Free Here! Young M wants to also do the Symbols of Christmas lapbook from HOAC as well. I suspect she is loading herself up, but, as long as she gets her other work done, she can go for it.

Here are a couple of freebies that are also available:
Free Nativity Lapbook for younger children
Free Christmas Symbols lapbook
Free Christmas Lapbook - older children
Free TOS Digital Holiday Supplement - lots of great stuff here for Thanksgiving & Christmas!

That and along with making a few Christmas presents for some people, cookies (fun, free e-book from Homeschoolfreebies.com last week) and hopefully, some caroling, we should have a fun, Christ-centered month leading up to Christmas.

Thanksgiving Resources

I wanted to share a couple of my favorite resources for Thanksgiving:

This is from Homeword:  30 Days of Thanksgiving - Cultivating a Thankful Heart

This is from Revive Our Hearts: A Week of Thanksgiving

This one from Resources for Christian Teachers: Audrey's Thanksgiving Page

And this is my favorite resource that I think we should all watch each year: Bill Federer - "The Real Story Behind Thanksgiving"

VCY Rally: Bill Federer - "The Real Story behind Thanksgiving" from Crosstalk America on Vimeo.