Christmas presents

Ruth has really enjoyed making Christmas presents for her sisters this year. First we made the teddy "bean bag" for Hannah. Ruth was given one of these for her birthday and so we used that as the idea for Hannah's. I did not get photo through the process but Ruth really enjoyed sitting on my lap and doing the sewing. We sewed all the pieces on with the machine and she would sit and push the button to make the needle go up and down and also lift the foot when we needed to shift the material. We had so much fun with it.

We decided to go for a cat for Rachel (who loves cats). So I found a pattern on line and Ruth cut that out. I transferred the lines onto the material and then Ruth helped me sew the picture onto the material.

We sewed the two pieces together (the wrong way around) and then Ruth turned it the right way around (hiding all the stitching inside).

Fill with wheat and stitch closed.

Rachel and Hannah were thrilled with their presents.

Math-U-See started

Ruth was so very excited about the copy of Math-U-See Primer that we picked up yesterday. She wanted to get started straight away. Eventually I had to say "enough for today". It's a introductory level so the children don't need to "master" each lesson as they do in the other years. This year it's just about exposing them to the math concepts. In the introductory lesson he even says that for some children they are not able to write well enough - and that's ok - you as a parent can just have them dictate to you and you write for them.

It's all about allowing children who are interested to have fun with math and start that journey of loving math. So although I would never have thought Ruth would start this before she was 5 (having never seen the Primer level before), I do know that she is ready for it and is going to have such a fun time. Already she wanted to show Dad what she could do and she was very excited about telling him that when it's 1, 2, 3 or 4 she can just know straight away how many - that she does not even need to count - she just sees how many there are.

Fruit Brulee

200g strawberries and 110g blueberries
We used strawberries and raspberries.
Dust 1 tbsp icing sugar over berries and toss to coat.

Whisk 120ml cream. Add 2 tbsp icing sugar,
200g Greek yoghurt and 1/2 tsp vanilla.
Place on top of the berries and sprinkle with brown sugar.

Place in the freezer for 15 min.

Heat the grill to high. Grill as close as possible
to the heat until the sugar has melted.

Cool slightly  before serving so the sugar forms a crisp crust.

Christmas decorations

Placing the pieces right side together and pinning.

Ruth was really excited about the sewing project we started. Julia had given us this lovely material and the idea of Christmas decorations and Ruth learnt so much through this project.

Working carefully with pins. She did a good job.

Rachel did the sewing on the machine and Ruth helped
me over lock the edges.

Ruth had tacked a few of them together
and so she took that sticking out now.

Then the tricky part - turning them the right way around.

Getting her fingers into the corners.

Then stuffing them.

Some red ribbon to hang them by.

Rachel sewed them closed on the machine.

They look lovely. This is the front.

And pretty bright colours on the back.



Helping Rachel wrap the present. This one is for
their ballet teacher.







Preschool Nativity Pack

I printed this Preschool nativity Pack off the Internet yesterday and Ruth and Hannah had a lot of fun with these pages this morning.

Ruth said "This is easy" :-)

"Jesus starts with ....."

And then the letters on her own. Good job Ruth.

Differences

Rachel needed to do a Brownie project where she collected 5 weeds and did something nice with them. The girls collected these weeds a while back and they have been drying in my flower press.

Today was the day for making the cards. This was Ruth's creation. I should have taken a photo before I laminated it. :( Hopefully I will remember in the future.

Ruth was a great help today in sorting out Dad's work socks. For some reason I missed his weekly wash and so ended up with almost two weeks of socks in one load. At least I know he has enough for two weeks. :-) She did a great job in matching them up as some of them are very similar.