This Years Advent Fun Involves Writing A Story.

Every year we put the little stockings I made years ago up, hanging from the banister, going up the stairs.

Each year I do the whole advent thing a little bit differently. There is always a sweet treat, a message from the Christmas Elf and then a quiz or puzzle or Christmas Joke.

One year he had maths questions to solve, which sounds a bit mean but he LOVED it, he was really into maths at the time. Another year he had to solve a riddle, this year Christmas Elf has asked for help...

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Dear Ebi-kun (Christmas Elf actually uses his real name!)

Santa has assigned me a very important job this year. I need to write a story to read out to all the elves after they have finished all their work on Christmas Eve. I am VERY busy so I was hoping you could help me out.

Please use this book to write the story, this is the way to start it*

Once upon a time, in the middle of winter a snow storm raged. Two friends held hands as they trudged through the freezing blizzard to...

When you have finished the first part of the story, show the Mama Elf - she is the one with the red hair, I have left a clue with her on the whereabouts of the magical Christmas Market.

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When Ebi-kun has finished each section of the story, he shows me and I give him a clue to where the actual advent calendar is, I managed to get a traditional one from kaldi Coffee Farm, where you open the window each day, it is designed to look like a Christmas market! I will change the location every night (if I remember!)

*I also plan to give him prompts along the way to make the story more interesting.

I can't wait to see how this rolls out. And of course it's a sneaky way to get writing practice in, something he doesn't get enough of.

And as our tradition goes, I also pop a little bit of something in each stocking that is a part of a game or puzzle but he doesn't get the complete set until Christmas eve.

In the past I have put in Lego, a few blocks a day - he had no idea what it was going make, that was fun! Card games have been popular, especially when we were traveling in December, it made the portable advent calendar possible! 

This year is a new card game, which I'm looking forward to playing on Christmas Eve!

How do you do your advent? This is very different from mine when I was a kid, we got a paper calendar which had a crap picture behind each window!

Those were the days!

Quick reminder - if you haven't signed up for the FREE Holiday productivity Challenge, pop your name in the box below - it's going to be fun and you will get stuff done because I will be keeping you accountable!

It will free up more time and help you to get the important jobs done and out of the way so that you can enjoy the holidays (plus they are skills you can use again and again)

Introducing The Dragon Man

A while ago I picked up a colouring book from Flying Tiger (I love that shop!) anyway, back to the book, it has characters drawn to colouring one side and lines to write a description on the other.

Ebi-Kun is loving this and has been coming up with some great characters! There are some blank pages at the back so you can make your own characters too. we have been talking about all the different people in the book and think it would be fun to write a story using a couple of the characters as the main part of the story. 

It'll be an interesting story considering the people he has already come up with!

We are having babies!

Lizard babies!

Ebi-kun and his friends went to a disused patch of land nearby and caught a load of lizards, so we now have 3 of the little critters! One of them was quite fat so he went off and researched and decided that she must be about ready to lay eggs.

This morning we came down and they were just milling about as usual, we had breakfast and whilst we were eating, this happened...

Yep, we now have 3 lizard eggs. The book suggested moving them out of the tank, so they are now sat in a bowl, Ebi-kun will have to sort out a new tank when he gets home from school.

I'm not sure how long they take to hatch, Ebi-kun is super excited. I'm also not sure what we are going to do with them over the holidays, I can't see daddy being up for foraging in the undergrowth for grasshoppers and the such like!

I think they will have to be released into the garden when it comes time for us to get on the plane!

This is what I wake up to every day....

Ebi-kun is funny!

He is up at 5.30am on the dot, by himself. He comes downstairs and gets dressed then gets stuck into a project of some kind.

The last few weeks he made himself a time machine, a fully working torch out of a smarties tube! Written some newspaper reports, translated a chunk of his Japanese dinosaur dictionary into English and churned out numerous pictures, this morning he was working on a self portrait!

I often wonder what will happen when we hit the teenage years, whether the tables will be turned and I'll have to drag him out of bed or whether he will still have the same mazing self discipline.

Coming from a Montessori approach, I don't want to give him work books or force him to sit down and study, no quicker way to put a kid off learning! So giving him the freedom to choose makes a huge difference. We have talked about keeping his writing level up - speaking in English is no problem. And so it was his idea to translate the dino encyclopedia, he did 20 entries and had to look up the latin names and time periods, which was a great job. I check through an make a note of any mistakes, especially recurring ones, so we can deal with them. Capital letters is the thing he needs to work on at the moment.

The newspaper reports we have done for a while but he came and asked me to make some new ones for him, and off he went again, writing stories about the adventures he has had. If you want to know how to make the newspaper articles, there is a tutorial HERE.

Each morning, I come down the stairs and wonder what weird and wonderful thing he is working on this morning...