Advent School

Advent is the beginning of the new year, liturgically speaking.  For the last few years we've had 'Advent School.'  This has been emphasized in some years more than others, but usually we consciously focus on doing fun stuff and things that are preparatory for Christmas.

I've already started thinking about it and here are some of my thoughts:

Read alouds:  I've been reading aloud Bible History every morning at breakfast, though this isn't written in stone. During November, I read St. Elizabeth and the Three Crowns to B.  For Advent school I'd like to read The Little Apostle on Crutches which I got some time ago from Catholic Heritage Curriculum.  The kids and I really enjoyed King of the Golden City from CHC last Lent/Easter.  In fact we've enjoyed many of the books and resources at CHC so I am hoping The Little Apostle proves a hit also.

I also have arbitrarily announced that in December I will be reading David Copperfield aloud to anyone who wishes to hear it.  I love that book and have read it at least 3 times and now I just feel moved to share it with my family.  I think it will be a cozy winter eve book!

We do work on cursive, math and Latin anywhere from 1 to 4 days a week.  I think it would be fun to change up how we do this.  Instead of working on cursive, I thought I'd try Unjournaling; a book that keeps popping up as I cruise the homeschooling/unschooling internet world.  So maybe the time is right to try it out?  For math, I think I'm going to suggest playing math games and reading neat math literature instead of working through the textbooks as we have been doing.  For Latin, I think we might stick to the books we've got but maybe I'll try to splice in games, audio-visual stuff and more fun translating.

We'll also focus on gift-making, cleaning the house (and maybe earning some extra money for gifts), Christmas/Hannukah arts and crafts, decorating the house and focusing on the reason for the Season!