The best season of all 2012- second week of December

Our quiet holiday preparations continue. As I've written before, I have toned down on crafts this year and try and vary activities. So the second week of December we:

Day 9: We read "Buying mittens" by Nankichi Niimi, since it became a holiday tradition for us of sorts. Kids traced their hands and decorated mittens using wax crayons.
D.'s creation:

Day 10: Christmas lights gazing. We drove around looking at pretty lights.

Day 11: Kids unwrapped new books in the morning. For C. it was "The Beasties by Jenny Nimmo, plus a chapter book for D.

Day 12: We went and bought our holiday tree. This year due to our home library (uncontainable) growth there was no room for a big tree, so we just got a tiny tree to put on a table

Day 13: Family movie night - Harry Potter! We also did some cute paper flowers for our trees with friends:

Day 14: D. and I tried our hand in origami again, and yet again were not quite successful. My dream of having a paper crane mobile in the kitchen is still far from reach it seems. We did have fun though (mixed with frustration) and managed two not quite pretty paper tables. We decided to make it our goal next year to master origami.

We listened to some holiday music, here is our favorite song of the week: Mika Nakashima-Yuki no Hana (Snowflakes)

Our books this past week can be found here, some holiday reads included.

Summer check-in

Quick check-in, our summer is splendid so far. Lots of time outside, playing with friends, local library has some great programs this summer, so yeah, not much time for me left to blog.
As I've written before, I'm trying to maintain some kind of structure in our studies. I must confess it doesn't work quite as well as I hoped. For instance our "Native Americans" study had to be postponed because D. showed very little interest and just wanted to "rest" all the time. So rest it is. After a school year (even relaxed and easy one that we had) it is well deserved. There are only certain rules that I have in place: read whenever it is possible (don't have to ask twice- mama's boy will read anything he can get his hands on).
Our activities for rainy days  and quiet time are the following:
D. got interested in mazes again( he loves Maze Craze Series by Don Oliver) , as well as hidden pictures (this book is our favorite at the moment). He loves cross word puzzles  and word searches.This website allows you to make your own puzzles, it's just great.
He is really into board games lately: Our absolute favorite is : Enchanted Forest by Ravensburger. Mystery Garden is popular too. Rivers, Roads and Rails requires more patience, but total fun for the whole family.

So far, so good. I got my books for the first grade, gonna start planning soon. :)

Happy summer to friends and visitors!