December Day #17

Our angels were found by the tv holding a picture of a bell.  The devotion was about freedom.  The freedom we have from sin that is found in Jesus.  Bells ring out a joyous sound; our freedom is a joyous thing!

Crystal and Blossom opened books today.

The books are:

• The Happiest Search.  An Arch book which has a rhyming story about the Wisemen.
• The Steadfast Tin Soldier.  Not exactly a Christmas Story, but it has a Christmas tree on the front!  Good discussion to be had about why things happened the way they did.

I just had to share our lunch.  Pumpkin and Kumara soup made by Angel...there are no words to describe how good this tastes!  Try it sometime... here is the recipes on my food blog.

Today is the beginning of Hanukkah, or the Festival of Lights.  This is our first year of learning about this festival.

It is a Jewish festival which celebrates an historical event when the small Maccabean army drove out the large Syrian army and rededicated the Temple so they could once again worship God freely.  
When they cleaned up the temple they found only enough oil to light the lamps for one day; the lamps which were to burn continually.  They lit the lamps anyway and sent a rider off on an 8 day journey to get more oil.  Miraculously the one day worth of oil burned continually for 8 days and nights until the rider returned with the new oil. 
This is remembered and celebrated still, as a miracle that God performed, which shows that he can do wondrous things.

Our crafts today centered around the Hanukkah story.  
We made blue Star of David with tinsel pipe cleaners and a black paper/cellophane window menorah.

Blue stars, menorah, and a wooden tealight candle "menorah" my dad made me.

We also played with a dreidel; a spinning top.  The Hebrew people were not allowed to worship God or teach from the Torah while under the invading army rule.  So the teachers would sit with their students on the side of the road and do their lessons in the dusty ground.  When the soldiers came riding along they would rub out the writing in the dust and begin to play with the dreidel, gambling for coins.  Since the soldiers played similar games themselves they didn't think twice when they saw the teachers doing this with their students.  The probably felt they had "won" in changing the peaceful God fearing people to following Greek culture.
Here we are using the dreidel my dad made for me.  There are 4 sides each with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet - Nun, Gimel, Het, Shin. We used chocolate coins.  It was quite a lot of fun.

Arrow spinning the dreidel.

Eagle gets a good spin going.  He and Angel seem to have most of the coins!

A Butterfly spin

Cedar's spins were short.

Blossom spins and everyone has to put a coin back in the bowl!

Cedar eyeing up the coins!

Crystal spinning in hopes of being able to win all the coins in the bowl.

Everyone puts a coin back in the bowl.

We made latkes for dinner; a potato fritter fried in oil.  Because potatoes are a hideous price at the moment and I had none we used kumara, and I fried them in lamb fat as we had lamb patties for dinner too!  It was DELICIOUS!  And even my kumara fussy children liked them!!

I also made this apple challah but we were too full to eat it!  Breakfast tomorrow.


Just before bed we lit our candles.  The tall candle is called the Shamash or attendant candle.  It is used to light each of the 8 smaller candles.  Each night one more candle is lighted, until after 8 evenings all are alight. In memory of the miracle of the oil burning for 8 days.

We also read verses that tell about Jesus being the light of the world and the giver of light.

~Lorna