Today’s prompt is a freebie! Last year I did gingerbread and I absolutely loved that post. Lol. I love gingerbread though, so it makes sense I would like books about it. This morning I was feeling uninspired and asked Wyatt, my ten year old what I should do. And his answer was dragons. So Christmas dragons it is! Wish me luck! (I am doing this on the fly, no planning, eek! And that pun was unintentional)
Now I don’t know much about the first one and second books, but Wyatt LOVED the Dav Pilkey Dragon books. He does have one Dragon Girls book, but not this one. It is really pretty though, isn’t it?
The first two are apparently very spicy, according to the reviews. And if you like A Gift for the Christmas Dragon, there is a whole series of them!
This one was a big stretch – there is not a dragon in this book. But the the Inn is called The Weary Dragon Inn so I am going with it. If you like cozy fantasy, I have heard this is an awesome series, compared at times to Legends and Lattes. It has been on my list for ages. I need to get to it!
These are both listed as cozy fantasy and they sound it. I am adding them both to my TBR, and if I can, I am going to read one this December. However, my December TBR is already mammoth, too big honestly for a hectic month. I am not letting that stop me from hoping though!
I hope you all have a magical day today, and do something that makes you smile!
And, I want to add that Lisa at Boondock Ramblings and I co-host two link ups together. This month we are hosting Comfy Cozy Christmas, which despite the name is for any December holiday, wintery post, and A Good Book and a Cup of Tea, which is a monthly bookish link up for any and all book posts.
Hello everyone! Thank goodness for coffee this morning. I am chilled today, with the intense cold that we are having. Next week we have a deep freeze, with temps dipping down into the negative numbers. I hope to get all prepared today and tomorrow so that we barely have to step foot outside unless we have to, like for appointments and therapy. Poor Billy though will still have to leave for work in it.
This week has been another week of focusing on work – although we did throw some fun things in as well!
Wednesday Wyatt had physical therapy, but this week he had therapy, then a two hour wait before math tutoring, which was in the same building. So in between we went to the Henry Ford Museum! It was a fun way to spend a few hours. It was super weird, because it was an odd time and no one was there. Just a few other people but the museum is so big that we felt like it only Wyatt and I walking around.
We are actually going to call off tutoring next week due to the cold, and just go home after therapy.
Yesterday, I decided to shake things up! Instead of our normal day of school, we celebrated Appreciate a Dragon Day. Wyatt has been working so hard that I thought he deserved a fun school day. So, it was all dragons all day! We started with reading books about dragons, then moved on to studying the dragons of Wales. We will be looking at Chinese dragons on Chinese New Year, so I thought we would stick with Western style dragons this week. I bought a unit study on Etsy that was about different dragons of the world, and we combined that with the book Dragonology, and had a blast. It felt like school, but… was all fun. Wyatt had to label cities on a map of Wales for one of the activities, and one of the names of the cities made me do a double take! It is, ahem, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, on the Isle of Anglesey. According to this article written by Rick Steves, it means “St. Mary’s Church in the hollow of white hazel near a rapid whirlpool and the Church of St. Tysilio near the red cave”. It had a smaller name until a tailor added to the name to try to attract visitors. I have to admit, I am a person who would definitely make a stop there because of the name!
Then, I had two projects lined up to make – an art project and a STEM project. However, the art project took us so long that we never made it to the STEM project! I will save it for another day. The art project turned out so cool though – it took us like two hours to make it together! We also listened to a dragon book on Spotify while we worked.
After that we took a bit of a break – or rather, Wyatt did. I was getting ready for the final part of Dragon Day- we were having a dragon themed dinner, snack, and then we were watching How to Train Your Dragon. I kept it simple, and it turned out pretty cute!
We all had Dragon’s wings grilled cheese (cheese on Black Rye bread cut into dragon wings), dragon scales (Doritos), and our snack was popcorn with Swedish fish bowls, because Toothless the dragon in the movie loves fish! Unfortunately, my little dragon explorer didn’t make it to the movie! He zonked out ten minutes in. Lol. So we turned it off and we will watch it either Saturday or Sunday instead.
Tonight I will be glad to plop into bed and just chill out, after a long week. I am going to my mom’s first though, to hang out for a bit, then when I get home, I will shower, get in my pajamas, and crawl into bed to watch some television and stitch and read my book! I started Hans Brinker yesterday and it is so good so far, although I am barely into it yet. This weekend we are finishing up some things so that next week we can stay tucked into the house as much as possible.
As for Dragon Day, this is what we read and used!
(This section does contain Affiliate Links from Amazon and Etsy)
Wyatt’s favorite of the group was A Friend for Dragon. It was pretty funny honestly. Dav Pilkey is awesome. I loved The Truth About Dragons, which is about biracial identity, and it was absolutely beautifully written and illustrated.
So, I just realized that I never posted about our second Heritage study, Scotland! We did our first, Hawaii, back in the summer and then Scotland right around Thanksgiving. I didn’t do much in the way of Thanksgiving content, I chose to focus on the immigrant aspect of the holiday, which led me to our own immigrant roots.
I have always loved stories about different countries and places – something that has never waned even as I have grown older. I often choose to read books based on setting, and will read and read until I decide I have gleaned everything I can about a place from books. I guess I cure some of my wanderlust through these words. Anyway, I have always loved learning about different places and cultures and I want my son (and niece) to have this love of place as well. I realize that geography is not the most exciting thing for kids, especially five year olds to learn, so when I was planning this study, I wanted to stick to more fun, kid friendly topics, like the wildlife and animals, and some of the folklore, music, food as well.
That being said, we spent the first week on some of the wildlife and farm animals of Scotland – Shetland ponies, sheep, highland cattle (a particular favorite of mine, check out the hashtag #coosday on Instagram if you love them as well, you’ll thank me), and puffins, which were Wyatt’s favorite. He loved that little puppet! I wanted to spend some time on those wild Scottish cats but I just ran out of time for it all! We also talked about kilts, of course, as every resource I found has people wearing them.
The next week we went a little crazy – it was a holiday week after all, so I just let us have some fun, and we studied unicorns and dragons and the Loch Ness Monster. Because, why not? Lol. They are little, lots of time to grow up and learn other things.
Wyatt even had a guest reader! My mom read him Nessie – and I love how my mom and Wyatt are sitting in the same pose. We read Zog by Julia Donaldson (our inspiration for dragons… I love all of her books so much), watched the movie Zog on Amazon, read books, made art. It was just a fun week, and we loved it.
Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs.. 