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

December Day #16

Ahhh...much better day staying home today!

Today we did 2 Follow The Star devotionals to catch up.

Firstly our angels were sitting atop the bread maker holding a picture of a bakery.
Did you know BETHLEHEM means "house of bread"?  Ok you say... 
Well did you know that Jesus referred to himself as "the bread of life" in John 6:48.  
Micah 5:2 says "Bethlehem...out of you shall come forth the One to be ruler in Israel".  
I really like that God considers even the smallest details... Bethlehem (bakery) out of you will come Jesus (bread of life).  
And to further the analogy, bread fills us when we are hungry.  Jesus will fill us in that empty, lonely, hurting place in our spirit.  

The second place our angels were today is sitting on my hat stand (no hats; just scarves, and wedding things).  They are holding a key with the word PEACE on it.
Peace.  Often you will read the word peace on Christmas cards with pictures of doves.  But why is Christmas the season of peace?  
When the angels announced Jesus birth they sang "Peace on Earth" because Jesus is called the Prince of Peace.  Peace had come to earth in the form of Jesus.  Many at the time were hoping that peace would entail the over throw of the Roman rule in their land, but it was a different kind of peace that Jesus offered.  The peace you can have when things are not going so well as you might like but you know that all is ok because the Creator is in control. 
Peace is the key.  

Today Arrow and Cedar opened a book each.

The books are:

• The Gifts of Christmas.  This is a Precious Moments book.  I love PM.
• A Child Was Born.  A sweet rhyming version of Jesus birth.

Crafts today!  

We made suns to go with the stars.  
Suns, because when Zechariah was able to speak again after the birth of his son John he spoke a prophesy in which he said "...because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace." Luke 1:78-79
He spoke of Jesus as the sunrise shining light into our dark sinful state and guiding us in the way of peace.
Isn't that beautiful!  That's what we will think about when we look at our suns on the window!

With the sun shining through the cellophane we get coloured shadows on our table and floor...pretty!

Next craft was relating to the names of Jesus.  Letters cut out of magazines and glued to a Popsicle stick with a ribbon to hang.  There are many names that describe Him and help us to understand more about God.  These 5 crafts have names chosen by the children from our devotionals.

"Jesus" "Son of God" "Bread of Life" "Emmanuel" "King"

I don't very often give any of my children colouring in pages (that can be another blog post one day) but occasionally they are useful for time fillers between crafts.  

Here is how I kept Arrow and Cedar happy for hours today.  Truly hours!
Glittery homemade playdough.  They loved it.

This is Crystal's picture - grass, stars, clouds, wind.  I love it.  So creative.

Arrow holding Olaf on a glittery mound of snow!

Olaf is digging in the snow to find a star!

Cedar loading the dump truck with playdough.

Now it is a racing strip for motorbikes!

Lots of vehicles and the occasional animal.

Now for the food part.  Candy melts.  Put hard boiled lollies into cookie cutters and into the oven at 180 degrees for about 10 minutes. 

Before 

After

They melt and spread.  Fun to try.

I tried out Christmas Tree bread and Star bread.  They turned out great!  And delicious!

Before cooking

After cooking

Before cooking

After cooking

We will definitely do these again!  

And after a busy day someone has to clean up!

If it has a button and makes a noise, trust a boy to be the first one to volunteer!

And so the other gadget crazy boy doesn't feel like he is missing out I blew up a balloon and he watched it hover over the vacuum air outlet! 

~Lorna