A Cobweb Christmas

We love our Catholic Mosaic book written by Cay Gibson. Amazon tells us, "A set of study guides for parents and teachers who wish to share Christmas-themed picture books with their children. 30 children's books are featured with discussion questions, vocabulary, and enrichment activities. Includes an extensive list of over 200 Christmas picture book titles, crafts, poems, and recipes."

We have been enjoying the books recommended in this book for many years.

And I always seem to have a new group of littles to enjoy the books and activities with.

The books we enjoyed over the last few days were: The Cobweb Curtain

The Christmas Cobwebs and

Cobweb Christmas:The Tradition of Tinsel.

All the stories incorporated the ideas of the goodness of spiders and how they helped the baby Jesus or helped those who helped celebrade Jesus' childhood.

 I  found a great printout for a spider snowflake.

We very carefully cut out our spiders and when we unfolded them we were so happy to find beautiful paper spiderwebs, 

It take a lot of finger muscles to cut out the paper which was folder many times.



Success!!

We glued our finished spiders onto black constructions paper. We then used out finger to spread on glitter glue.  

We found a great print  of our spider that we made into Christmas snowflake.

Some to the spiders and a couple of the wonderful  books

Now, I am one to catch the spider and put it outside to "be with it's family" 

I was so happy to find the simple craft to make a spider suitable to every Christmas tree.The simple dirctions for making a jingle bell spider craft can be found here..they are very cute. 

Makes My Monday--The Great Christmas Book Switch-a-roo

The First Sunday of Advent brings an exciting change.....the Christmas books are brought up from their tote in the basement and are displayed for all to enjoy!!!

The beginning of the Christmas magic Makes My Monday!!

The Cobweb Curtain-and craft

Last year we read the story of The Cobweb Christmas and then made a simple craft with the kids.

This year we got The Cobweb Curtain from the library. It is the story of the Holy Family's flight into Egypt and the spider that consealed them from soldiers as they hid in a cave. It is a great story that we all enjoyed.

After reading, we looked back at the spider webs we made last year and Mark remembered reading about how to make a spider web from the book 100 Things You Should Know About Insects and Spiders.
We tried to follow the directions...

We taped down the straight strings to begin the web. This went fine,

then things got way too messy and a little too difficult for a mother and 4 children under the age of 9 to do. You are supposed to dip the string into the glitter glue and then place it in a circular pattern around the web. This sounded easy--it stuck to everything, our fingers, the table, hair, and small children.

I stopped this technique and used a toothpick to spread the glue where I wanted it. (I should have just squirted the glue out of the bottle, but it was in a bowl because we put the string into it at first.) This way it was easy to place the string onto the cardboard using the plastic end of a paintbrush. After the string was down, I used clear "school glue" to cover the strings some more so that when it dried it would be very secure.

The next day, I was able to take the tape off the cardboard circle and trim the stiffened string. I then let the littlest among us paint over the whole web to give it more sparkle. We used my new favorite glittery glue paint.

It is so nice and shimmery. It would be much prettier if we had painted the cardboard black. (Maybe next time.) You can't really tell from the picture how is shines. We trimmed it and added a paper clip for hanging. I wasn't really going to put it on the Christmas tree, but Mark insisted, remember, it was his craft idea. In fact, it goes quite nicely on our almost totally homemade tree. In this picture you can see part of a borax snowflake, a popcorn string, a paper chain, pipe cleaners with pony beads and part of a handsewn ornament--very child friendly!

St. Nicholas DID pay us a little visit

St. Nicholas generally pays us a visit and leaves us candy and chocolate coins, and this year was no exception.

YUMMY! YUMMY!
We have enjoyed our favorite St. Nicholas books.

Luke and Kim have had fun putting together these cute St. Nicholas puzzles from the St. Nicholas Center, our favorite site for activities.

I hope everyone has had a great feast day!!

The Christmas Barn-by C.L. Davis

We have found a wonderful read-aloud to enjoy this Christmas season. I am not sure where I first heard about it, but I and the kids were greatly pleased with the true to life humor and hardship found within its pages. Especially enjoyable was the fun the characters have as a close knit family. There were quite a few places in the story where the kids were laughing out loud, and that is a real good thing when reading to alot of different ages.

From School Library Journal:
Gr 4-6- Roxie Dockery and her family always look forward to Christmas, no matter how humble. Life in Appalachia was difficult even before the Great Depression swept over the country, but there was always a little candy and fruit, a Christmas tree at the church, and the grandparents coming for a visit. This year, though, a snowstorm leaves the family trapped on their mountain. Next, a huge tree crashes down on their house, leaving Baby John with a broken arm and the entire family homeless. However, the resourceful Dockerys move themselves into the barn and work together to create a new home and a Christmas celebration, which turns out to be the best yet. There's a lot of fetchin' and tendin' and the like, which gets a little tiresome, but vivid descriptions of everyday life and a believable, funny, and-above all-loving family make this a pleasant holiday read.-M. A.

We all definitely recommend this book as a must read for the Christmas season.