Handprint/Footprint Nativity Scene Tree Skirt
Every Christmas growing up I looked forward to seeing the handprint with a poem my preschool teachers helped me make as a Christmas gift for my parents back when I was two. I really wanted to do something to capture my own children’s sweet little hands and feet, and while I was searching for ideas for our Father’s Day gifts last spring, I found several ideas for making pictures from a Nativity scene. I decided to combine them to decorate a skirt to go around our Christmas tree.
Merry Christmas!
To be honest, I wanted him to dive in and get through it all this week. He didn’t. And so I just bit my tongue, took a deep breath, and let him go at his own pace. We took a day off for Arianna’s birthday and he still managed to get in a solid week’s worth of work, so I can’t complain. In addition to his history and math work on the computer, he’s reading through 
, the assigned literature for his history course. Ian loves being read to, but he’s usually reluctant to read on his own, so I was surprised at how enthusiastically he picked up the book each day. He even asked if we could get some of the other Stepping Stone books, intrigued by the titles like Man in the Iron Mask and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I told him I’d rather he wait a couple years and just read the “real” books, but I’d help him look at the library for the Stepping Stone versions.
As far as Elijah goes, I didn’t demand much from him this week. Instead of doing regular lessons, I set him to work systematically going through his 
and the 
book that uses the same blocks. I like giving him something to do besides flying through grade levels on CTCMath.com, and since he’s fascinated by building things, I figure his time is well spent developing his spatial visualization skills. After Christmas I’ll have him go back to lessons too, but for these light weeks I think this is a great Kindergarten activity.
, which I’d never seen.
