The Week Before Christmas

Note: I am still in the process of planning this lesson. Please stay tuned...I will add more to this section as we approach, interact, and conclude our activities.

Remember the last week of school, just before Christmas break? Substitute teachers, worksheets, crossword puzzles, and coloring pages...It really was the most wonderful time of the year. I want to capture that in our homeschool lessons for "The Week Before Christmas." Our week begins on December 16, Wednesday and will end (the day before Christmas Eve) on December 23, Wednesday. That is six days of Christmas anticipation filled with Christmas literature, historical old Christmas movies, and lots of preparing to bake enough cookies to make Santa swoon. Let me share the details with you: 

For English/LA, we will be reading four chapters a day of "A Christmas Carol" via Modern Publishing. I purchased this at the Dollar Tree. The letters are huge and 4 chapters are between 15-30 pages at a time. Austin likes to get wordy in the morning, so these 15 pages may take a good 30-60 minutes. If it were a thicker Christmas book, we would break down our reading into both morning and evening in order to meet a one week deadline. Austin could read this whole book in one setting, but he could probably do the same with our entire set of box curricula as well.

For History, I have several original movies from the 40's to 70's picked out. Thanks to Apple TV and Youtube, I don't have to assault the DVR, harrass my library like a Black Friday blowout, or even pay to have these on demand for us to view. Most of these movies are about 30-50 minutes long without commercials, so we will be watching two on some days. Heck, we might knock them off at lunch or as we unwind after bedtime baths. 

Here is our list

- Frosty (1969)

- Frosty's Winter Wonderland (when he gets married)

Austin noted that both Frosty and his wife's first words were "Happy Birthday." We considered that this might have religious hints that modern society would find insulting in today's censorship. We used this link to learn the difference between a parson and a preacher. It went well with our origins of language theme for Language Arts:

http://the-difference-between.com/pastor/parson

- Twas the night before Christmas (1974) 

Austin and I read the full poem by printing from this website

http://edhelper.com/poetry/The_Night_before_Christmas_by_Clement_Clarke_Moor.htm

Then we drew an image based only on the description

Saint Nick looks rather creepy, doesn't he? Austin noted that smoking is bad...unless you're an imaginary Demi-God,, like Santa. We also noted that it was ok to mention prayer and say the word, "Stupid" in 1974. Oddly, the phrase from "The Santa Clause" finally made Austin chuckle. He hadn't previously made the connection.

- Santa Claus is coming to Town (1970)

- A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965)

- The Year Without a Santa Claus

- Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer (1942)

- Rudolph's Shiny New Year (yay, geography lol)

- Mickey's Christmas Carol (lastly, when we finish the mini-novel)

For math and science, we are doing cookie recipes. I sent two cookie recipe books in the bedroom with Austin to note his favorite recipes. He thinks we're going to pick one to make. Mwwwahaha! Tbh, we will be changing these recipes. Note: Austin was very confused at he sight of words like 'German chocolate' and 'Spiced' cookies, so I had to play layman translator for him.

Our recipe list comes from my "Family Living, Simply Deliscious Cookies" book. It's a dollar special I bought about a decade ago. You can use ANY cookie section or Holiday entree. Here are the recipes I chose, along with their page numbers in my dollar book:

- Victorian Stamped Cookies p7 aka super basic brown sugar cookies

- Apple Spice cookies p13

- Gingerbread for houses p26

- Cinnamon Walnut Biscotti p29 no walnuts because Ray is allergic (raisins?)

- Shortbread p41

We will be using these recipes to apply the following four skills via their pre-printed handouts:

1. We will use a US/Metric conversion chart from Chef Solus to write our measurements in metric units

2. We will multiply the recipe to a humongous yield and use the measurement equivalents chart from Chef Solus to neatly simplify everything.

3. We will learn how to use everyday household ingredients to replace the odd ones we are 'missing' via an Ingredient Substitutions worksheet I found at SpendWithPennies.

http://www.spendwithpennies.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Baking_Substitutions_grayscale.pdf

4. We will use a print from Betty Crocker to see if there are any ingredients that can be substituted with healthier choices.

http://www.bettycrocker.com/how-to/tipslibrary/baking-tips/healthy-baking-tips-low-fat-substitutions

Lastly, we will bake one (probably Biscotti because it's easy and tasty) straight from the book and share with loved ones.

*Note: When converting to metric units, the answer must be simplified in metric terms. 

To wrap it all up with a bow

We will be reading a Christmas book, watching Christmas movies, and altering Christmas cookie recipes all week. Austin is not a craft enthusiast, nor does he enjoy sing-along's, which is why they are not included in our very basic lesson plan. 

Speaking of which, we learned how to make our own Christmas (or any holiday) gift bag out of wrapping paper. This would've been very helpful to know pre-Secret Santa, but the bag we used was too irresistible.

Additional Ideas

- Find the area/radius of wrapping paper needed to wrap a gift. Use a ruler and a calculator. Remember that you need excess on the top and sides.

- Make a Christmas list for someone of the same age, but opposite gender as if you were their parent. Prepare a budget. Look up the prices at the cheapest online store (exclude shipping), and apply the budget to the list without removing too many gifts.

- Plan a Christmas dinner by looking up recipes to form a complete dinner (appetizer, entree, sides, desert...two of so,e for options). Based on the amount yielded from each recipe, determine how many you'd have to make to accommodate a family of 3, 5, 20...a big ole dining hall full of families, you generous little giver.

- Design your own Christmas show lineup for the month of December (25 days). Write the release date, find the popular voice characters, and write a brief bio about each show enticing viewers to watch. That means, no spoilers, the first paragraph is about the show and the second is how it applies to the season. You may also like to include a spoiler of morals to note and share.

- Traditions. You can type up a document of your own Family's Christmas traditions, noting where they came from and why they mean so much to your family or look up other people's historical family traditions online. My mother says that my grandfather insisted on putting an orange in their stocking for years. Go figure, he's German. Later, grandma used long straight pins to attach smaller fruits like grapes and berries to the Orange as well as nuts adhered with peanut butter and/or honey. The kids would hang their ornamental bird feeders outside to see which of the 6-8 the birds seemed to enjoy the most based on the previous year's findings, accessablity of the accessories, and the location of the treat. 

Your thoughts?

What are you doing for Christmas? Are you doing any worksheets, projects, or activities that you'd like to share? Please do so in the comment box 

Geography Lesson Pt 2 Our Neighborhood

Part 2 of Geography has to do with local maps. Our box unit explained that maps use keys to represent items in non-verbal or universal language. This post explains how we applied the lesson to real life. I used our home address as point A. I then chose our local library (about 4 miles away from our home) to be point B. By using local points of interest, Austin is able to apply his knowledge by memory. Let's see how well that memory serves him in designing and translating maps.

Sketch Map

I asked Austin to draw a wordless map explaining how to get from point A to point B first in pencil and then in colors. I told him to consider that the map reader might make a wrong turn and need to know how to get out of a mistake. He drew restaurant food to represent stores. He used dotted lines to represent roads, multiple dotted lines to represent highways, and curved dotted lines to represent curves in the road. He also used landmarks, like the house on the corner that is highly decorated for Christmas right now, a box with a police car for the station, and a book inside of a box for schools. He could've stuck to drawing details in this map forever. When he was done, he explained the key to me. We drew a box to represent buildings and a a dotted line to represent roads, but I wrote jibberish in the key to represent an alien language. We forgot some roads and restaurants of course,  but that's ok because it isn't being published. 

This quick and very basic map, that respectively excludes unimportant focal points is known as a sketch map. Sketch maps are useful, but not as useful as a detailed map because there is more room for error on the reader's interpretations. 

**This exercise was my way of explaining to Austin that the language of maps are unspoken. They are almost entirely visual. You can read it regardless of what language you speak. The pictures and curves are self-explanatory knowing the context of the symbol from the key. Since you don't know jibberish, you'd only need to look up a few words for the entire map to make sense to you.  

Using a detailed map

We held our concept of point A and B. Now we are using a detailed map from Google Maps to plot our travel between library and home. First, I asked Austin to write directions based on Google Maps. I asked him to pretend he was a GPS, so that he would include "continue on ___ past (intersections). When you reach (intersection) turn l/r.

We used Apple TV to view the directions from Google Maps, so that we could compare their instructions with our own. I could have printed these directions, but Apple Air saves me the ink and paper. Austin announced that it wasn't fair because he didn't have a map key. Then I threw him a treat in the air...just kidding. I shouted, "Bingo" and high fived him. 

We compared Austin's sketch map to the Google Map and (without bias, of course) gave the positives and negatives of both. We discussed who would prefer either map and why. While Austin's map is easy to draw and understand, it is not as precise as the 'final draft' from Google Maps.

**This exercise was my way of explaining to Austin that keys are important whether or not the map includes words and/or pictures. Without the key, Austin cannot truly guess the distances on the map. 

Conclusion

Sketch maps are greatly appreciated by lost visitors, while detailed maps are sometimes hard to read without their bilingual translations. Both maps successfully explain a path from one point to another. Neither map is necessarily better than the other, but a person may have preferences. You just use what you've got to get where you need to go. If that isn't a metaphor for life, I don't know what is! Austin's imperfect map is perfectly acceptable. It is to the point, easy to read, and quickly accessable by memory. In some ways, it's better than Google Maps, especially to someone who only speaks jibberish.