Advent

We read our first verses last night and prayed over the Christmas season we are entering into.
We prayed that we might keep our focus on Christ (and not on things). We also prayed for those in our family that are not "In Christ" that they would come to know him.

Here is a neat advent guide to go along with your season. (This is one from last year, but it'll do just fine.) I just ordered an advent devotional from the library and I hope that we will be able to do some devotions throughout the advent season. (Though I don't plan to do it as religiously as in the past.) I do want to light the wreath each week.

I purchased this beautiful advent wreath from Chrisitan Book Distributors.

Wisdom is being able to....

Fall Fun

Well as the leaves turn colors and change in the fall. I had to get a few pictures of the kids.

Home Made Christmas Cards

Yesterday I got a little free time, so I decided to make some Christmas cards. I had a limited amount of time so I had to coordinate with stamps and colored papers I had on hand.

This is a manger stamp I bought on after Christmas sales at Hobby Lobby.

This is the scripture stamp.

I made this using a friends Christmas tree punch. I saved the punched paper

and then just used foam backing tape to make a 3d effect.

I like the added stamp on the envelope, it adds a hand made quality to it.

I also like to stamp the back of my cards and then add my name.
I just need to find a name stamp so I can stamp it.

This card is one of those premade cards that you can purchase ready made. You just add the embellishments. So the blue paper is just a scrap paper I had laying around and I used a friends'

Cuttlebug embosser to make the Merry Christmas embossed wordking. Then I stapled the ribbon on. (A trick I learned from my friend Candace years ago.) See it pays to stamp with other

people because you learn so many valuable tricks and get great ideas.

This was a premade card. I just added stamped the tree image

on the gold paper and glued it on.

I really think this one is my favorite. These were more of the after clearance stamps
I got at Hobby Lobby earlier this year. The family and the stocking girl are related stamps.
But the Happy Birthday Jesus stamp was a stand alone. I thought it worked great with this.

I used patterned paper, then a solid red, then stamped the image onto a light green paper.
Then I heat embossed it. After that I colored it in with markers and added embossing powder to one section at a time. Heating it, then coloring in more. It took a while doing it this way. But it
really shows up well in real life. It is all slick and smooth. I think I will try it again next time with some watercolor pencils and see the effect.

This is the inside of the same card.



Another embossed element added to a premade card.

Tree stamp on gold paper glued onto prepatterned card. I added the ribbon.

Stamped image on gold paper on premade card.

Now this card is made from cardstock, then I embossed the blue paper with the Cuttlebug, and added the Merry Christmas embossed element on top.

Wasps

I did not have any lapbook components, and was feeling really lazy. So I just had the kids draw a wasp and write something about them. (I allowed them to copy information out of the book.)

Bees Unit Study and Lapbook

Here are pictures of our Bee lapbook and unit study.

Homeschoolshare makes it so easy.

You can just pull up the unit study, see the booklist they recommend,

print the lapbook components and you have a unit study already

prepared for you-all for FREE.

The best part is how much I learn too. I never knew that bees could dance!

Beetles

I am a few weeks behind on posting our lapbooks.

Here is our lapbook from our Beetle unit.

We read books on beetles, weevils, fireflies, and lady bugs.

We also used Aplogia Zoology 1 and read excerpts on each one

The lapbook components came from Homeschoolshare and Lapbook Lessons.

A couple pages came from enchanted learning.

I also got some resources from Lapbooklessons.com

These are from that site.

Ds9 wrote a story about some beetles playing cards.

Learning about lady bugs

and fireflies and bioluminescence.