The Feast of Saint Andrew

Saint Andrew is the first saint' feast day in Advent. I fact often it precedes the beginning of Advent by a day or so.
One of our family traditions for this feast is that it marks the start of our special Advent prayer which we pray every day for our special intentions of the season. The boys and I will pray this each morning . We are also reading the Jesse tree devotions from this site Thanks Anne they are brilliant!

This evening as we lit our Advent wreath we prayed the prayers and verses on this red card. I found this somewhere on the internet but forgot to write down the site so if it is yours, thank you and please take this as acknowledgment that the thoughts on the Scriptures came from you and I do not claim them.

Our feast day meal included a crumbed fillet of fish, with fried potatoes and a tomato and cucumber salad.
Cupcakes iced in blue with a fish shape liberally sprinkled on most completed the meal. Happy feast day!

Making cards

Guess what has kept the boys busy today?! Christmas card making! We didn't send too many last year so we are very keen to do so this year. Youngest son in particular is hoping to get some back in return by post("for the stamps mum!")
Both progects have been a nice conclusion to some of our art studies this year. In the first we were able to review our look at Mondrian and other modern art that emphasizes line and colour.

The second progect almost didn't work until we figured out we needed printers ink(a touch expensive!). But then it sparked a real enthusiasm with older son who thought that lino cutting/printing might be an interest he would want to go back to after Christmas.

as an aside we discovered that dandelion juice and other green vegetation is great at ridding fingers of black stains. How did we discover this? Well another feature of today was a worthwhile hour spent in the garden "discovering" a multitude of green goodies for our hens!!

Memory work!

As part of our Advent preparation ds's and I are learning the familiar words from  the Gospel of Luke Chapter Two that talk about the birth of Christ. Each day we read the entire passage ,then we take a verse and focus on its meaning before committing it to memory. An effective way we have found is to cut the words of the verse apart,removing sections while still reciting the entire verse. Then when we have it all in pieces the boys put it together on a bulletin board set aside for this project.

Readalouds for Advent

We have three new books waiting to be read together for Advent. Just a few more days,we can hardly wait! Patricia MacLachlan is one of our favourite authors. Her style is lyrical and reads almost like poetry.We were thrilled to find a new book by her for Advent. Elizabeth Gouge writes beautifully for adults and children. She often intertwines make-believe with the real world, but in a way that amplifies both.Youngest son has been humming the carol the title takes its name from ever since he saw the book. The third and final selection is a new author and so exciting in its own way as we wonder if it too will become a remembered favourite!

Cimabue

We are studying the artist Cimabue as part of our Medieval history programme. Our study will only last for a week as we are hoping to finally complete our studies before Advent! As we looked at our three chosen works by the artist we noted that Cimabue was the first  to have human figures tilt their heads.

"Instead of studying his letters, Cimabue spent all his time covering his paper and his books with pictures showing people, horses, houses, and the various other things he dreamt up."

Landscape and art

We had a lovely day yesterday doing art with another family in a country town not far from us.

 The artist whose studio the workshop was in has an amazing nature corner which kept us occupied for some time. The workshop was on printing. the other family had been studying the art of Albrecht Durer and in particular his wood cuts. We started off by drawing some funny animals which combined features of real animals and became our fantaminals. Then we moved onto mono printing and tried out various methods. Finally the boys attempted their first lino cut/print. I can easily see this skill being used in advent in making our homemade christmas cards! after the workshop we had lunch down by the river and then went for a walk beside it.

We discovered the mural the our teacher had made and examined it in detail.The boys enjoyed trying out various skill points along the way! And spotting the family with the largest number of ducklings.

A pleasant drive home and we arrived home weary but well satisfied with life!