Brad started the morning off by preparing cream filled crepes with a blackberry sauce. I hate breakfast, but stole a bite and declared it delicious!
We learned that in France, they don't send out Christmas cards, but New Year's cards. So each of the kids picked a friend they hadn't seen in a while, and sent them a New Year's greeting.
For the next activity, I was very thankful for my engineering husband. I had seen this great picture on Pinterest where the creator took wafer cookies and modeled the Eiffel Tower. We could do that right?? Uh, it almost because a Pinterst fail. Well, the second picture is Matthew's tower that lasted about a whole 2 seconds before falling! I didn't complete mine past the first layer.Brad was the success story and he assisted Anna in completing hers.
Normally, we color the flag of the country, but Anna realized that the colors we chose for our frosting were in the French flag so she decided to frosting color her flag :)
Next we glanced through some non-fiction books about France to learn more about the culture, geography, and history. Then we read "Beauty and the Beast". In the picture below, you can see the books we read.
Our next activity was to a short biography about Coco Chanel and then the kids had to design their own outfits.
One of my favorite artistic time periods was the Impressionist Era. So, of course we had to learn about Claude Monet and create our own masterpieces! One of Claude's fascinations was with bridges, so we taped a bridge design and then used our fingers to paint the landscape. Obviously, I am the rebellious one and had to do my own thing :P If you wanted to see the gorgeous finished paintings, I guess you will have to come visit me as I forgot to take after pictures! All of us agreed that that was a fun project.
France is seven hours ahead of us, so we celebrated New Year's with sparkling apple-peach cider at 5 PM! Happy New Year!
For dinner, we had a four course meal. Our first course of a mozzarella and tomato salad is not technically French. However, I was able to justify serving one of my favorite things when I read that the French do eat this on a regular basis! Next, we had parmesan encrusted tilapia with a side of ratatouille and rice. Next, Brad excitedly whipped up a creme brule. He received a torch for Christmas and was anxious to try it out! We ate these courses while watching one of our favorite movies, Ratatouille. As the night worn on, we ate our final course of cheese and fruit. The kids got to try Munster cheese, Gouda Cheese, and Brie.
That completed out French New Year. The kids also received a book to share...Geronimo Stilton an the Mystery in Paris. They loved it!
We did also start a new tradition and work on an old one. I found these black balls at Target this year. I saw on Pinterest where you write down fun memories each year on the ball and then it becomes an ornament. Each of us picked two things that happened in our year and wrote them down. Another of our old traditions is to cut out a copy of our hands and then write down a verse we want to focus on for the year.
I am wishing you all a Happy and Blessed New Year!
