Cultivating Childhood

December begins tomorrow!  And so does our advent calendar!  Yikes!  Our family has been so sick this last month with pneumonia, pink eye, ear infections, and now mama's wisdom teeth taken out that getting ready for Advent has been difficult.  However, the end is in sight, and I have high hopes for an enjoyable Advent season. Like last year, we will be using my muffin tin advent calendar.  For each day, there is a M&M for each person to enjoy along with a strip of paper with our fun activity and Bible verse for the day.  Here is what our family will be doing this year:  Thursday, the 1 st  – Genesis 3:1-21, Set up Nativity Set, Wrap Baby Jesus in a box for the boys to open and put in the manger. Friday, the 2 nd  – Genesis 6:5-8, Make a nativity craft out of construction paper Saturday, the 3 rd  -  Genesis 12:1-7, Visit Nativity exhibit at Crista Sunday, the 4 th  – Genesis 21:1-7, Advent Wreath Week 2 Monday, ...

Morning video of Button "reading".

Thanksgiving is over, the turkey has been eaten, the tree and lights are up, and the house is mostly decorated.  We had a wonderfully big Thanksgiving with my husband's family.  We are so thankful to live close to them and celebrate with them! Making a Gingerbread House with cousins for one of their birthday parties. More birthday party fun - pinata! Button with his great-grandma at 92! Thanksgiving meal Four of the Hagelberg boys And now, Advent is already upon us!  Today is the first Sunday of Advent, and we are doing our Advent wreath again this year.  Last year, we used our church's handout for our family's time, but this year, I was surprised by how many wonderful and free devotional resources you can find online that can help you with preparing for Christmas.  Here are a few that I found (all are free!): Seattle Union Gospel Mission's Christmas 2011 Devotional They also have a number of other ideas to help the needy on their Acti...

My baby is growing up!  Button turned two in August, and he's decided that he is too big for the crib.  In the same week he chose to sleep only in the bunk bed and learned to climb out of his crib.  It looks like it's "bye bye" crib.  Of course, this presents its own set of challenges as we can no longer keep him contained in his room at bedtime, but seeing how Buddy grew out of this, we have high hopes for Button. Anyway, we now have two adorable little boys in a bunk bed.  I've always thought that it would be fun to have something at the head of their beds to designate whose bunk was whose, so when I saw this idea on Pinterest , I knew I wanted to try it. I varied a bit from the original idea as I didn't use actual canvas (although in hindsight, I think it is the best choice).  I used cardstock paper instead.  It worked okay, but when I took the tape off it tore the paper a bit. Then, I let the boys go at it with fingerpaints.  They had a ...

My biggest thing I'm thankful for right now?  That my pneumonia is gone!  No wonder I've had no energy and been sick for a month.  My new doctor and the antibiotics are a godsend.  Thank you, Jesus, for health! So now, I know it is a bit late for a "what to do to get ready for Thanksgiving" post, but better late than never.  Besides, now I'll be able to look at my archives earlier next year to get my own ideas! Instead of coming up with my own stuff though, I thought I'd just link to what some other people in the blogosphere are doing for this holiday. Homepreschool and Beyond Thanksgiving craft ideas, poems, service for the needy Sweetbits Free grown-up printables for putting you in the Thanksgiving mood! Ministry to Children Free Thanksgiving coloring pages Homeschooling in a Bilingual Home This is currently one of my favorite blogs.  She has some great living book recommendations for younger children to read at Thanksgiving.  More here...

About a month ago, we picked up this fun book from the library. It had about a dozen nature crafts that could be done by preschoolers (with help, of course).  One of these was called "Glowing Flowers".  Sounded like fun to me, so on a day that Button was napping, Buddy and I got to work on these nifty candle holders. First, we gathered our materials: pressed flowers and leaves glass votives (picked these up at the Dollar Tree) tissue paper paint brush Mod Podge (or white glue mixed with water) Then, we "painted" the outside of the votive with Mod Podge. Followed by placing our pressed flowers around the glass.  (We found that our leaves weren't flexible enough to lay flat against the rounded glass). Then we had to wait for the glue to dry before we could go on. So we went on a mommy/son date for smoothies and boba! When we got back home, there was more gluing. Then, arranging the torn tissue paper around the glass until the entire votive ...

We've had a rough last month of being sick.  Consequently, we haven't gone out as much as I would have liked, and I'm dreadfully behind on my blog posting.  Despite the setbacks, we have managed to make it to a couple of nice parks in the last few weeks.  Today, I'll be highlighting Woodland Park . As someone who did not grow up in the Pacific Northwest, I was surprised to find that Woodland Park is a huge park that is separate from its neighbor, the Woodland Park Zoo.  The park is actually divided into two parts by Aurora Ave.  The west side boasts of a play area and the zoo; the east side (also known as Lower Woodland Park) is made up mostly of woods and picnic areas.  There is also an off-leash dog area on the east side near Green Lake. Our trip found us mostly on the east side.  We played around in the woods for a while. We admired the moss on the trees. And found some fun sticks to drum with! The boys were also fascinated by the appearan...

For a while now, Buddy has been confused by the difference between salt and sugar.  When I'm cooking, he sees me place some white spice into my food and often just labels it "sugar" whether or not it is the case.  We've tried explaining to him that sometimes it's salt, but because both words start with "S" and they look an awful lot alike, he was struggling with the difference.  Then, it dawned on me!  Let him try both and discover the difference for himself! It worked!  He decided that he really likes sugar (big surprise!), and wanted me to continue to refill that part of our palette.  We then pulled out some more spices for him to try.  Although he didn't try all of them, he found the experiment fascinating. ...one would prefer to make flavour a source of interest rather than of sensuous pleasure to children: it is better that they should try to discern a flavour with their eyes shut, than that they should be allowed to think o...

Christmas is always such a busy time of year for us.  Christmas Day is Buddy's birthday and New Year's Eve is our wedding anniversary.  However, as Christians, the Advent Season leading up to Jesus's birth is a very important time for us.  Ever since Buddy was born with sharing Jesus's birthday, we've struggled to find a good balance between family events and celebrating the birth of our Lord. I know, I know.  I'm talking about Christmas and it's not even Thanksgiving yet.  But, I know that everyone is starting to think about Christmas.  Golly!  Even the stores have been filled with lights and decorations for Christmas for weeks now.  Thoughts of Christmas are starting to happen around here as well, and a big issue is how to do gifts.  How do you give gifts to your children and other people you love without commercializing this religious holiday? image from habitsforahappyhome.wordpress.com For us, we try to do a lot for Advent. ...

My goodness, where did October go?  I've been very tardy in my blog posts here, so here's to a catch-up post for the last month. The first weekend of October found us at Carleton Farm .  We had a lot of fun picking out our pumpkins, seeing the animals and shooting the pumpkin cannon. The next weekend we went to Sky Nursery for their annual Harvest Fest.  We made a scarecrow, saw more farm animals, had some free popcorn and hot apple cider and went through their little maze.  The boys had a blast. The next weekend, we got to see Grandma!  It was nice to have some special time with her.  We even got to go down south to visit Great-Grandma and have some of her famous waffles. Finally, there was some pumpkin carving to be done.  The boys weren't so keen on the slimy mush, but they were good sports and enjoyed directing mommy and daddy in what they wanted us to carve for them. ;-) We didn't do any trick-or-treating this year, but...