I love learning, knowledge is power – Louise Hay
Finally we got on with making a Christmas table cloth, as a family project. I wanted to make a memorable cloth, that the children every year made a personal appliqué, which we would sew onto the cloth. So this year we got started. I am so looking forward to eat on it Christmas eve.
Our oldest daughter loves to read and write. She has written stories ever since she learned to write as a 6 year old. Now she has taken up the challenge to complete a Christmas Calender. The story is called “Snow Storm”. She loves fairy tales and fantasy. She also loves mythology, chemistry, traditions and stories that ends well. So if you like traditional fairy tales that ends well, with lots of excitement and lovely characters this is for you. You can also read the story as text on our daughters own website: martha.schou.dk
We love traditions and keep on inventing new ones all the time. Particularly Christmas is a star of tradition and celebration. We celebrate Christmas all during December. Today, on the 1st of December, we started out with putting up our homemade Christmas Calender – 4 Santas holding bags with space for surprises. This year our youngest child had already written a letter to Santa 4 months ago, so he put that in the bag to get to Santa.
Our oldest daughter has been writing on a Christmas Story for the past month. A story with a chapter for each day until Christmas. So she had put that into her Santa bag.
The Santa dolls in the bags are for them to play with. They got them when they were really small and have made clothes and things for them during the years.
In the evening I prepare songbooks and today, a list to complete with the children tomorrow, listing and arranging the things they wish to do in December.
All the kids take turns on lighting the candle.
The kids open their presents one after each other. Afterwoods all children choose a song and we all join in.
Our oldest daughter has this year written a Christmas Calender, where she reads a chapter aloud for all of us every day up to Christmas.
Every evening my job is to reply to letters to Santa. It can be returned with corrections in spelling and new questions they then will reply to and practise their spelling and vocabulary.
This year I had also bought school tickets to the Royal Ballet, where we saw “Alice in Wonderland” together with a lot of other Home School friends in the afternoon.
We also choose 2 Christmas Calender series each year, and watch them before or after breakfast.
We are doing a series of Religious visits and experiences at the moment. Most religions are very friendly, and invites us into their community, to tell about their beliefs. Today we were invited to visit the Ba Hai community in Hellerup, Denmark.
Ba Hai is a new religion and springs from the Muslim belief, but instead of believing that Mohammed is the prophet, they believe that there has been a new prophet 200 years ago called Bahá’u’lláh.
They believe that all the religions of the world actually is one religion and have one common god.
During our visit we were allowed to take part in a ceremony. Then we had a guided tour, where we talked about their beliefs and values. Then we had lunch together. In the end the children was given different texts, which they read together and then talked about.
Ba Hai has a large community in India and in Africa (Congo particularly). They have 4 large religious monuments in the world.
Once a year you can go meet the Sikhs in Denmark on the main public square. They call it Turban Day. You can get free food, try getting tied a turban on your head, listen to music and ask in general about the religion.
We find that it is a great way to get hands on experience of the different religions practiced around the world. To go out and meet the people who live by the rules of different religions and are willing to tell about it.
To be a parent, means to be a role model for your children. Being the one to dare try new things, like going forward and trying on a turban, can be one of those things. But also being able to accept that the children find it quite enough just looking at you doing new silly things, is a parent job.
After life is always interesting to talk with the children about.
Religion often can be tied to different languages too. So language can also have a great influence on religions, which can be interesting to talk with the children about.
Where is the religion practiced geographically? Another area of learning, when you are dealing with religion.
Educational lecture on the Jews in Denmark, during the Second World War. This was our first visit to the Jewish Museum in Denmark. It was a pleasant experience with dedicated staff. They opened the museum just for us. The building was made to simulate the travels of the Jews and the persecution of the Jews through time. The floors was uneven to make you feel seasick, as most of the Jews in Denmark escaped the concentration camps, by being shipped to Sweden by little fisherman boats.
The Jews in Denmark was never made to wear the famous star, but it still was quite a sickening feeling to hold a real one in your hand.
99% of the Danish Jews managed to escape to Sweden or hide in Denmark. But the ones that got caught, was sent to the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp. It was a propaganda Concentration Camp where a part of it was a studio made to record how great life was in the Concentration Camps.
In the Concentration Camps they were paid monopoly money for their work. They had no real value.
The famous frontpage from when Denmark was freed from the Nazis 5th of May 1945.
We love Christmas. Actually so much, that we work hard the whole first part of the year to get halfway with our books, to do just Christmas things all through December.
With candle decorations, we have to start a bit before. Because they have to be ready on first of December and Advent.
So we start by going to the forest to collect natural things to put on the decorations.
It even includes a bit of math, as the clay has to be measured to make sure everyone gets just the same 🙂
The finished result – 5 lovely decorations. One is going to be a present for granddad.
We all love to chop wood. It is a good way to keep warm and get motivated to get outside, when it is cold and we have run out of wood inside for the stove. We take turns swinging the ax and work together, carrying the finished pieces inside.
Today our daughter designed this cat in tinkercad. It is a program you can use for free on their website. If you have a 3D printer you can print out your design. She had not tried that programme before, but designed it on her own. We have a friend who has a 3D printer visiting and he told her a few things to improve, and she then did that on her own.
This is what it looks like on the screen.
Our friend then sent the design to his 3D printer at home. He has a camera hooked up to the printer, so we could follow her design being printed on our phone.
We have a channel on youtube called “Videnskanalen”. We have for a long time been thinking about making a channel, with knowledge based videos, made by children.
The first movies are biology themes, but that may evolve over time. The first movie theme was about the Sea Cucumber. The next about Octopus. Now we have made one on the Corn Snake, as we have just bought one for our daughter.