St. Lucy's Day in the Morning
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Melting chocolate for the whipped hot choocolate.
Frosting cinnamon rolls.
Heading upstairs to wake the boys!
Looking longingly at all the fun. Next year, dear one...
Happy Feast Day!
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It's been kind of a joke around here that I've barely left the house since returning home from the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception last year after Midnight Mass. Karoline was conceived a week later and I spent most of the pregnancy at home, very sick and very happy. So, today was a momentous event. We returned to the Shrine and we visited the same little chapels where we lit candles and prayed last year. This year, there were tears of thanksgiving for the miracle I held in my arms. Oh what a joy to introduce our babe to this beautiful, holy place! What sweetness to honor Our Lady who has so cradled us this year!
It must have been Meet Your Favorite Author Week because after Mass, I wandered down to the bookstore and had a chat with Scott Hahn. I told him how the upper shelf of our library is lined with his books and I had the privilege of introducing him to Catholic Exchange's newest regular contributor. We talked a bit about blogging for Catholic Exchange and he signed my new book for me. It says "Happy Feast Day." 
And it was. It really, really was. Here are more pictures from this place that feels like heaven on earth.
Advent and Christmas with Tomie de Paola and Others: Week 2
/Advent and Christmas with Tomie de Paola and Others
Scripture Memory Verse: And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, For he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden. For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed; for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.”
Luke 1: 46-49 Shorten as necessary.
Narration:
Child will listen to or read The Legend of the Poinsettia and The Lady of Guadalupe and The Night of Las Posadas and narrate.
Stories to Read:
The Christmas Miracle of Jonathon Toomey
Read Aloud: A Christmas Carol. (Dickens).
Copywork
For beginners: May God be as good to you as he was to Juan Diego.
For middles: Juan Diego looked down. His rough cactus-fiber tilma had been changed into a painting of the Lady just as he had last seen her at the foot of Tepeyac.
For the big kids:
And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, For he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden. For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed; for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.”
Rabbit Trails for the whole family:
Read about Mexico. Find it on the map and tell about the country today. How is Christmas celebrated there?
Make Holiday Flan:
4 eggs
2 and one half cups milk
one half cup honey
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 to 2 tablespoons warmed honey or syrup
Method:
In a medium bowl, beat the eggs until foamy. In a small saucepan, heat the milk and honey together just to simmering, then add the vanilla.
In a slow, thin stream, beat the milk mixture into the eggs. Our the mixture into a buttered 9” layer cake pan or flan pan. Place in a large, shallow pan or baking dish filled with hot water to a depth of one-half inch. Bake at 325 degrees for thirty-five to forty minutes, or until the center is fairly firm. Glaze with the honey.
Makes six servings
(from Joy to the World by Phyllis Vos Wezeman and Jude Dennis Fournier)
The creche is an important part of The Legend of the Poinsettia. Where did the tradition of the manger scene begin? Read about it in Francis, The Poor Man of Assisi by Tomie dePaola.
Make tissue paper flowers in red, white, and pink, traditional poinsettia colors.
Copy de Paola’s picture of Our Lady of Guadeloupe onto cardstock using magic markers. Send it as a Christmas card.
Using felt, make a large banner of Our Lady like the one in the book.
Have a procession like the one in the book. Gather up some friends to parade with you and have hot chocolate and cookies afterwards.
Make Mexican Hot Chocolate for tea time.
Copy the recipe above and embellish the recipe card for your lapbook.
Make a manger scene using old-fashioned clothespins, doll head beads and felt (all supplies are readily available in craft stores).
Make clothespin poinsettia ornaments.
Depaola_week20003
Detailed directions with pictures to follow, but you need old fashioned clothespins and doll heads, artificial poinsettias (3 or 4 will probably do), hot glue and glue gun, a little paint or markers in pink and blue, something to use as doll hair, gold cord to use to hang the ornaments, and flesh colored pipe cleaners.
Depaola_week20005
Make rose pound cake.
Make a Juan Diego for your lapbook. Copy the illustration of Jaun Diego twice. Cut the tilma only out of one of the copies. Copy the image of Our Lady.
Depaola_week20001
Cut and glue the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe to the full copy of Juan Diego. Tape the bottom of the tilma-only copy to the Juan Diego. Stick rose stickers to the inside so that when it falls open, you see roses.
Depaola_week20006
If there is a baby in the house, make a ceremony of letting each child trace a cross on her forehead and say, “May God be as good to you as he was to Juan Diego.”
Depaola_week200011
Make a grotto for Our Lady of Guadalupe
Set up a family shrine.
Depaola_week20002
Make ornaments like the ones pictured on the 4Real Message Boards.
Watch Juan Diego: Messenger of Guadalupe
More rabbit trails for older children:
Research Christmas traditions in Mexico. Make a flip book of them for your lapbook.
The story of Our Lady of Guadeloupe is presented as a legend in the book, using another source, read about the Church’s official teaching on Juan Diego. Read about the canonization of Juan Diego.
Our Lady of Guadeloupe is just one of many of Mary’s titles. Make a list of all of them and decorate the list with embellishments.
Carve a nativity set.
Poet Study:
Read Twas The Night Before Christmas by Clement C. Moore, Matt Tavares (Illustrator). Read every day, slowly, memorizing the poem together. This is the only poetry for the entire month. Break copywork into small chunks. Let children illustrate segments as they memorize.
Science and Nature Study
Don’t forget to get outside for a hike and don’t let it get swept away by the pressure of the season. A brisk walk is a great stress-buster for mom and kids.
Go to a Christmas tree farm and compare the different varieties of trees. Make sketches and label them in nature notebooks.
Read about Christmas plants in Hark! A Christmas Sampler (beginning on page 60). Visit a nursery to see Christmas plants up close. Bring home a poinsettia.
Narrate what you learned about Christmas plants and make a poinsettia covered brad-book for your lapbook. Copy a poinsettia picture from de Paola’s book, laminate it, trace it onto several pages of lined paper. Write narrations on the lined paper and “bind” them behind the laminated illustration with a brad.
Depaola_week200012
Music:
Enjoy A Classical Kids Christmas
Listen to Castilian Roses
Tea Time Read Aloud
Saint’s biography: The Story of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Empress of the Americas
Jotham’s Journey (Ytreeide) This is includes a daily reading for every day of Advent and Christmas Day. It is an adventure story that can get intense at times. Preview each selection and paraphrase if you think it necessary. Not a bedtime story.
St. Andrew Novena
/St. Andrew Novena
Hail and blessed be the hour and moment
in which the son of God was born
of the most pure Virgin Mary,
at midnight,
in Bethlehem,
in the piercing cold.
In that hour vouchsafe, O my God!
To hear my prayer and grant my desires,
through the merits of Our Saviour Jesus Christ,
and of His blessed Mother.
Amen.
It is piously believed that whoever recites the above prayer fifteen times a day from the feast of St. Andrew (30th November) until Christmas will obtain what is asked.
Imprimatur: Michael Augustine, Archbishop of New York
February 6, 1897
Jan Brett's Gingerbread Baby Lapbook
/Story
The Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett
Supplemental Stories
Musabi Man:
Hawaii ’s Gingerbread Man
The Gingerbread Man Jim Aylesworth
The Gingerbread Doll by Susan Tews
Read Alone: “Hansel and Gretel” and other stories by the Brothers Grimm
Social Studies
Compare the Hawaiian version of the story to Jan Brett’s story.
Narration with innovation (for the lapbook): Make a Venn diagram of the comparison.
Language Arts
This is a great book to use to reinforce a sense of story and story structure.
v This book is a circle story, so we can present it to the children with the circle drawn and divided into twelve parts. Prepare pictures representing each part. As you read the story, paste the picture into a section of the circle, working your way around until you return to the first segment which was the picture of Matti's home. I laminated the finished wheel and then I placed another cardstock circle with just one wedge cut from it over the top and secured with a brad. Now, the circle can be turned to show each segment in turn as the child re-tells the story. You can see the wheel on the upper flap.
Narration with innovation (how to make the circle for a lapbook): Make an 8 inch medium weight cardstock circle. Divide into have twelve sections:
1) The house from the title page (that's where the story begins and ends)--2 1/2 X 3 1/4 inch reduction on the copier trimmed to fit the wedge
2) Gingerbread boy in the bowl .2 1/2 X 3 1/4 inch reduction on the copier trimmed to fit the wedge.
3) mother and father searching --copier reduction again
4) Cat--I printed this page as is and just trimmmed the figures
5)Dog--as the cat
6)goat--as the cat
7) girls with braids knotted--copier reduction
8) fox--as the cat
9) milk man--copier reduction
10) pig--as the cat
11) river scene --copier reduction
12) Matti with the gingerbread house --copier reduction
All my children enjoyed the circle story lesson. For the older ones, I encouraged them to write a detailed narration of the Gingerbread Baby, bearing in mind the structure of a circle story. The protagonist begins at home, goes on an adventure and then returns home.
v Discuss the structure of the story using the terms conflict, rising action, climax, and denouement.
Be certain the child understands each term and can identify the part of the story.
Narration with innovation (for the lapbook): Gingerbread doll fold:
Accordian fold a piece of paper four times and cut into a gingerbread shape. There is a pattern at this site:
Decorate the cover of the folded book to look like the gingerbread baby. Opening it out, on the first fold, write “conflict,” then on the next one “Rising Action,” then, “Climax” and then “Denouement.” The children will identify and dictate each part. You can record these on the bodies of your folded dolls if you type and fiddle with the font.
v Look closely at the parallel story unfolding in the insets in the margin and discuss parallel construction.
Poetry and copywork:
Run, run, as fast as you can!
You can’t catch me, I’m the Gingerbread Man!
Once there was a gingerbread man,
Baking in a gingerbread pan.
Raisin eyes and a cherry nose,
Trimmed right down to his fingers and toes.
A gingerbread man in a gingerbread pan!
Here's the old woman who made him so sweet,
A treat for her and her husband to eat,
She made him with flour and sugar and eggs,
She gave him a face and two arms and two legs.
A gingerbread man in a gingerbread pan
Now open the oven to see if he's done,
This gingerbread man, he know how to run.
Out of the oven and onto the floor,
Now run away out the kitchen door.
The gingerbread man, he's out of the pan!
Now chase him old woman, now chase him old man
Chase him, yes chase him as fast as you can!
Through the garden and out the gate,
Catch him right now, before it's too late.
The gingerbread man, he's out of the pan!
Along came a cow who wanted a treat
And the gingerbread man, he looked good to eat
Run, run, as fast as you can
You can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man
I'm the gingerbread man and I'm out of the pan!
Along came a horse who wanted a snack
But the gingerbread man, he never looked back
Run, run, as fast as you can
You can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man
I'm the gingerbread man and I'm out of the pan!
Along came a farmer who wanted a treat
And the gingerbread man, he looked good to eat
Run, run, as fast as you can
You can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man
I'm the gingerbread man and I'm out of the pan!
Along came a dog who wanted a snack
But the gingerbread man, he never looked back
Run, run, as fast as you can
You can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man
I'm the gingerbread man and I'm out of the pan!
Along came a hog who wanted a treat
And the gingerbread man, he looked good to eat
Run, run, as fast as you can
You can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man
I'm the gingerbread man and I'm out of the pan!
Along came a fox who wanted a treat,
And this gingerbread man, he looked good to eat.
Jump on my back, my gingerbread pet,
And we'll cross the river, so you won't get wet
Mr. Gingerbread man, who's out of the pan!
There was no place to go, there was no place to run
And a ride on the river could be lots of fun!
So off with the fox did Gingerbread go
And what happened next, you already know
To the gingerbread man, who's out of the pan
That sly old fox had a de-lic-ious treat
And the old man and woman had nothing to eat
Not a bite was left for the cow or the dog,
The horse or the farmer or hungry old hog
There's no gingerbread man in or out of the pan!
So let us go home and get out the pan
And we'll make ourselves a new gingerbread man!
And when he is eaten, we'll make us some more
But this time we'll be certain to lock the back door!
A new gingerbread man, in a gingerbread pan!
Art/Cooking
v Watch the video online of Jan Brett drawing and reading The Gingerbread Baby
v Mix and bake and decorate gingerbread baby cookies.
v Make gingerbread houses; kits are fine.
v Sequence the steps in making the house.
v Narration with innovation (for the lapbook) Gingerbread flap book:
At the Jan Brett site is an interactive activity where the children can decorate their own gingerbread houses. Each child did this activity and I printed the finished product at 75%. This became the cover of the book, seen pictured in the middle of the lapbook.
We built our gingerbread house from a kit. I save the picture directions, copied them for each child and cut them apart. On the next page of the book, a green piece of paper, cut to the shape of the house, the child glued the steps to making the house in order.
The final page is another shaped green paper with a photo of the child building his house.
Stay tuned for plans for more Jan Brett Christmas books and a link to Kim's Jan Brett Lapbooks.
