Snakes, valentines, snowflakes and gratitude. What a plethora of topics! Ay? But, you'll find them all in our home for the rest of this month and next, well, except the gratitude bit...that'll be here all year and then some...along with lots of reading and real life learning!
Snakes~
With this being the year of the snake on the Chinese zodiac calendar & with the Chinese New Year beginning February 10, I decided to do a snake/China study with the girls. We love learning about animals, nature and other cultures and every year we celebrate the Chinese New Year in our own special way. I might also mention that I'm a snake in the zodiac, which makes it all the more interesting, as I have researched the snakes personality traits, and interestingly, I fit the description almost to a T!
As always, we decorate the ceilings with Chinese lanterns that we make with construction paper. There are many sites that instruct one on how to do this if you haven't already in your home. This year, we are adding some paper chain snakes to the decor. Quite adorable and easy too!
Always lots of resources on hand, either from around the house or checked out from the library. Internet research and anything with the theme of snakes or China will be floating around here for a while!
Valentines~
Well, this is pretty obvious! We always celebrate this day of love...but not just because it's Valentine's Day, but it's also my mom's birthday! All the more reason to decorate the home with hearts and write out love poems here and there!
SO much you can do with the subject of LOVE! The history of the holiday is cool too.
Snowflakes~
No two are alike! And we love the wintertime! Just wish we could see some more of these around here!
SNOWFLAKE BENTLEY is a terrific book and can really be used again and again. Don't know why I haven't bought this book already, but it's on my long list of books to purchase.
That is just one in a hundred gazillion books to read and learn about the science of snowflakes. Of course there are plenty of books out there that are just plain fun on this subject and snowflakes are interesting specimens!
Gratitude~
I think this is self-explanatory as well, but what we are doing is this:
We all made our own gratitude journals with folders and decorated the covers with anything that brings us peace and happiness. Could be a picture of cherry blossoms, or birds. Family, pets, a poem, etc.
Each day we read a quote about giving thanks and copy it, or write down five things we're grateful for that day. I've also tried to come up with unique projects for self-discovery. For example, yesterday we wrote down two scents that make you feel relaxed and two scents that make you feel happy and two sounds that make you feel relaxed and two that make you happy. Deep thinking takes place as we all go in to this. We then each switched papers without announcing whose paper we had, read aloud the answers and we all had to guess whose was whose based on how much we knew about their tastes! Really a lot of fun hearing every ones answers. For example, Lucy put splashing water (think pools in the summer!!) as one of the sounds that made her happy. Suzy put oatmeal as one of the scents that make her relaxed! Zoe likes the sound of horses trotting on the concrete, and one of Jilly's relaxing sounds was rainfall. Those are just a few of their answers to give you an idea.
One day we had to write out five things we like about ourselves. Or, write down five positive things about something you DON'T really like. Say, like rainy days, or being sick.
There are lots of ways to show gratitude and we are learning them through: the reading of good books, short stories, poems, music, meditation, yoga, mindful eating, etc. Finding beauty in everything and appreciating what we've got!
In fact...I'm grateful for all the things mentioned above!! But mostly just having the opportunity to grow and learn alongside my precious children. What about YOU?
