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This year we’re having a family New Year’s Eve celebration. Assuming we can leave the house (yes folks, it’s snowing again in the Denver metro area) we’ll be going to the Denver Zoo to see the Zoo Lights.

If the zoo is closed (which it is today) we’ll stay home, watch celebrations on TV, and play board games. One of the things I may have Nathan and Lucie do is decorate their Make Your Own Calendar 2007 with an appropriate winter scene.

Make Your Own Calendar 2007 is a great DIY calendar for kids. Each month features a space for them to create their own picture. It also comes with a sheet of 198 stickers to mark off birthdays, school vacations, holidays, and appointments. Since most calendars are now 50% at book stores, this is a great time to purchase it. Plus, it’s a great tool to help children learn the days of the week and the months.

Finally, if you’re going to stay home with the kids, why not make some mocktails? Mocktails are unique and refreshing party drinks that don’t contain alcohol, and make the occasion feel festive, especially for the older kids who are tired of juice and soda.

There are some great mocktails recipes online from About.com, BellaOnline.com, and ThatsTheSpirit.com. But I especially like the Greater Kingston Area Safe & Sober Community Alliance site. Several of their mocktail recipes will really appeal to kids, like Foaming Dragon and Funkey Monkee. This one is especially appropriate for this time of year:

White Chocolate Frosty Reindeer
Lonestar Texas Grill

Ingredients:

1. 2/3 cup of 2% milk
2. 1/3 cup of table cream or half and half
3. 1 large scoop of mint ice cream
4. Dash of peppermint extract or green food coloring

Directions:

1. Combine all the ingredients in a blender.
2. Blend until frothy.
3. Serve in a tall cup or glass with a candy cane and a squirt of whipped cream on top.

Technorati tags: calendars, New Year’s Eve, recipes, mocktails

Next year maybe you’ll want to encourage your child to explore more books on history and science. If that’s the case, let me recommend some terrific texts, Exploratopia: More than 400 kid-friendly experiments and explorations for curious minds and the Blast to the Past series of history books.

Exploratopia comes from the San Francisco museum of science, art and human perception called The Exploratorium. This book would be a terrific for homeschoolers as it contains science activities, experiments, and facts, and encourages a hands-on approach to science. But you don’t need to be a homeschooler to enjoy the book and its cartoons, illustrations, and science knowledge. For ages nine to 12.

The Blast to the Past series features stories on Martin Luther King, Jr. Walt Disney, Ben Franklin, Sacagewa, and several other American historical figures. For ages seven to 10, they make history entertaining and fun. These are especially great for children who are new to biographies and chapter books and a great way to introduce them good role models.

The Blast to the Past series was awarded Learning Magazine’s Teachers’ Choice Award. To learn more about the books, check out the Blast to the Past website.

Technorati tags: children’s books, history, science, New Year’s resolutions

One of my new year’s resolutions is to read some of the books I passed over when I was a child, like the Laura Ingalls Wilder stories. I gave myself The Little House Collection Box Set for Christmas and plan to spend the next few months dipping into it. When I’m done I can pass the set on to Nathan and Lucie.

I’d also like to reread E.B. White’s children’s books like Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little. Finally, I’d like to explore many of the Young Adult titles, such as the Lemony Snicket or Artemis Fowl series, that weren’t around when I was a teen.

In adult titles, I’m planning to read books about food and cooking, like Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany, and all the science fiction I can get my hands on. After reading a plethora of business, writing and marketing books this year, I’m in dire need of escape to galaxies far, far away…Captain Picard, here I come!

A great way to track what you’re reading is Books to Check Out: A Journal (for adults) or Books to Check Out for Kids: A Journal. The kids’ version offers space to track books they’ve read and want to read, plus provides mad-lib style book reviews, a time chart, a suggested reading list, and more than 50 stickers to use throughout the journal. Books to Check Out for Kids is a great way to encourage a child’s interest in reading, and getting yourself a journal - and using it - will provide a good example as well.

So what books are you planning to (re)read this year?

Technorati tags: children’s books, New Year’s, reading, resolutions

Kwanzaa is an African-American holiday that celebrates family, community and culture. Celebrated from December 26 through January 1, its origins are in the first harvest celebrations of Africa from which it takes its name. The name Kwanzaa is derived from the phrase "matunda ya kwanza" which means "first fruits" in Swahili. The holiday has been celebrated in the United States for 40 years, not without controversy.

The Seven Principles of Kwanzaa are:

1. Umoja (Unity) To strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation and race.
2. Kujichagulia (Self-Determination) To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves and speak for ourselves.
3. Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility) To build and maintain our community together and make our brother’s and sister’s problems our problems and to solve them together.
4. Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics) To build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses and to profit from them together.
5. Nia (Purpose) To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.
6. Kuumba (Creativity) To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.
7. Imani (Faith) To believe with all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.

These are some of the books Elizabeth Kennedy from About.com recommends for Kwanzaa:

• Seven Spools of Thread: A Kwanzaa Story
• My First Kwanza Book
• It’s Kwanzaa Time!
• Crafts For Kwanzaa (Holiday Crafts for Kids)
• Kwanzaa Karamu: Cooking and Crafts for a Kwanzaa Feast

Merry Christmas!

Today, we’ll be:

• opening presents
• video taping the unwrapping extravaganza
• hanging out in our PJs
• cooking
• listening to Christmas music from Johnny Cash, Brian Setzer, Dwight Yoakum, the Reverand Horton Heat, Elvis, Sinatra, and Harry Connick
• drinking sangria
• eating lamb
• baking apples
• making cookies
• calling relatives
• watching episode after episode of A Christmas Story on TV
• trying to figure out how to fit all the holiday present trash inside the garbage can so we aren’t charged for "extra pickup"
• ENJOYING TIME WITH FAMILY

Have a wonderful holiday.

Technorati tags: Christmas