Advent School

I like to mix things up for Advent. Stuff I'm hoping to do:

• Jesse Tree with Biblical reading first thing every morning
• Advent Calendar - we have a beautiful one that is made of wood with 24 little drawers. Each day you open a drawer and take out a little piece for a nativity creche, by Christmas Eve your creche is complete!
• We'll light our Advent wreath every night.
  
• We'll take a break from our cursive practice and instead pull out Mark Kitsler's (sp?) Draw Squad. The kids have been doing lots of cartooning and drawing lately anyway but it will be fun to do the exercises in the book.
• Instead of our regularly scheduled Bible History and Faith and Life, we'll do the Jesse tree readings and also CHC's Exploring the Mass unit which came with S's 5th grade plans.
• We are reading Freedom Train about Harriet Tubman. I hope to really move through that book quickly so we can get to the book on St. John Vianney.
• Instead of our regularly scheduled Latin we'll memorize Veni, Veni Emmanuel in Latin and I'll also read the I Am Reading Latin Books from Bolchazy-Carducci (www.bolchazy.com)
• Lots of math literature (and we'll continue with our Archimedes book) and games if we feel like it!
• We'll keep up our lit readings at night.
• It looks like the only noon Mass that we can go to all together during the week is on Thursdays, so that's what we'll do!
  
• Getting ready for and celebrating Chanukah. When is that anyway? Better look it up!
  
• Lots of cleaning to get ready for our big family Christmas party on Dec. 20th.
• That means we'll decorate the house on Dec. 19th!
  
• Lots of baking, Christmas cards and making/buying Christmas gifts!