Sunday Morning

After a week of cloudy weather, we woke up Sunday to beautiful blue skies.  

They made a gorgeous backdrop to the hoar-frosty trees.

Concert videos -- I had some to share but our network blocks the video upload feature!! 

....I tried!

Christmas for the Birds

Taken through our kitchen window; a sap-sucker, I think:)  

The beak on this bird is too short for a wood-pecker. There was also a red-headed wood-pecker on a tree but I wasn't quick enough to capture it.
(correction -- this is a female downy woodpecker)

Our yard has been lively with the flittering of chickadees all winter, and more so the last few days.  I guess it helps to have a few different feeding stations set up.

Christmas Crafts

Today is our last school day before Christmas.  I spent the morning finishing of things with the kids and doing a last minute practice of our song 'The Huron Carol'.

The picture shows a few of the crafts I did with my k-3 class this year.  The stars, (2 kinds)  were from a German site.   http://www.basteln-gestalten.de/sterne-basteln
One of the stars begins with a triangle and one with a square.  They were manageable for my Grade 1-3s.

The angel was from a little PM guided reading book, 'The Christmas Tree'.  I read it with some students and they showed the other children how to make them.  Cute and pretty straight forward.

The Craft above comes from this website. 

http://www.aimeeasher.com/shoppe/product.php?productid=3253&cat=0&page=1

It has the Nativity story told in poem form on one side and the pics to go with it on the other.  The whole thing folds accordion style into a decorated mirror compact.  Of course the kids loved it.  Enough so that it is not being be-gifted by some of them.  They want it for themselves!

Tonight is the school concert.  It promises to be a great affair -- lots of singing which is a highlight to me.  I shall try out my new flip video camera and see if I get anything worth posting.

We got Snow

It's promising to be a great year for snow!  

We must have gotten more than a foot this last week. 

There's a little guy braving the snowfall in the picture above.  This was on my home from school on Wednesday.

Back to school on Thursday morning.  Someone has been busy clearing the walks!

Some little guy is lucky to walk to school with dad!

And we all are lucky to see the sun rise on our early morning walk to school!  

(School begins at 8:15 for us.)

Beautiful!!  

Every morning I wish I had my camera with me.  The scenes are always spectacular. I have to learn to appreciate the scene without trying to capture it.  

I never seem to get a picture of the awesomeness anyway.

Tis the season

...for making gingerbread houses.  

Great fun for students, these are however a bit of work for me!  I spent till late last evening with a friend cutting and baking the houses.  I tried to make them smaller this year.  That way they would be easier to handle and need less icing and candy to decorate.

There is a great method to easily make houses with graham crackers.  I tried it once and it didn't go well with my students.  Maybe we should give the company a shout out for gingerbread flavored crackers!

  Grateful thanks to a few moms who showed up to lend a hand.

This was a 'sweet' way to end the week.

Austen Stamps

Just for fun!

If you like stamps and ink as much as I do; and you also relish a good Jane Austen novel or movie, then here's a shout-out to you.  A set of stamps themed around...

Jane's Countryside

They can be found here -- http://artisticoutpost.com/jaco.html