25 Day of Christmas Activities- Week 4

Day 1- We're getting close!  Here is a picture of the cupcakes we made for the staff at the YMCA where we go several days a week. We baked them in a mold, iced them, and used sprinkles to finish off the holly wreath look.  Addi was so excited to take it to her "teachers" in the nursery.

Day 2- White-chocolate covered oreo snowmen.  We had a Christmas party and thought this would make the perfect treat.  Addi was great at putting on the noses, but I had to fix a lot of the chocolate chip mouth pieces with a toothpick.  This was an excellent activity to work on her fine motor skills and attention to detail.

Day 3-  It's Christmas Eve!!!  Today we wrapped presents that we had picked out for friends and delivered them to friends.  Addi has been asking to wrap more presents ever since.  I told her we'll just have to wait until someone's birthday.  Then she got so excited because she knew that Jesus's birthday was tomorrow.  She went on and on about how we forgot to get him a present and we need to wrap it and take it to him.  Oh, how my heart melts at the sweet sentiments of a two year old.

Day 4- MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!  Today we made Jesus a birthday cake and decorated it.  We sang happy birthday, read the Christmas story, and then opened presents.  What a fun tradition.  I love it!!!

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25 Days of Christmas Activities- Week 3

Christmas is almost here!  There has been lots of excitement in our home with the anticipated birthday of Jesus.  Here are our pictures from this week.

Day 1- What's a Christmas tree without a little homemade garland of some sort?  Addi spent about 20 minutes threading fruit loops onto a sting and then the first one broke and they all fell off.  Our tress still has no homemade garland, but Addi was excited she got to eat a fun snack.

Day 2- Cotton Ball Candy Cane.  Today we went with an easy project for a busy day.  Works for me.

Day 3- If I had to take a guess this might have been Addilyn's favorite Christmas activity so far.  She kept "sneaking" some of the mini marshmallows and asking me to refill her bowl so she could finish making her snowman.

Day 4- These are our handprint Christmas trees that we made into magnets and put on the fridge.

Day 5-  Addi has gotten so much better at sorting shapes according to size.  She completed this activity in about a New York minute.  

Day 6- Today we painted paper bag gingerbread men using q-tips.  Addilyn had such a great time.  We hung them up on the wall but Josiah really likes them and has pulled them down at least 20 times already.

Day 7- Homemade cornstarch ornaments.  We had made ornaments with friends the first week in December, but we needed to make a few more for gifts for the grandparents.  Josiah's handprint did not turn out like we wanted and you can barely tell that Addi's thumbprints are actually thumbprints, but it's the thought that counts, right?  Merry Christmas.

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Letter of the Week - Letter K

Letter K Week- It was kickin'!  Addilyn learned that K is for kites, kangaroos, and keys.  To start off, here is our curriculum for the week.

Working on handwriting and phonics.

Our capital K kangaroo.

Counting 11 keys...

...and then making a lowercase k from them.

I made a kite matching game with scrapbook paper and popsicle sticks.  I absolutely love Addilyn's face when she finds the correct match.

This is her tissue paper kite.  Check our the crazy ribbon we used for the tail.  Ha ha.

I cut a ton of diamonds out of four different colors of construction paper.  First I asked Addilyn to sort the "kites" by color and then by size.  She had so much fun.  So simple, yet so great.  Who knew?

Letter K stamps!

For this game Addilyn had to glue to tails to the kite of the same color.  

Addilyn making her Kangaroo cup.  Kept saying it was me because it was a mommy.  She wanted to make a baby kangaroo to go in my pouch.  Yeah, that didn't happen.  My creative juices were running low that day.

Our kite books...

...and our kangaroo books.

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25 Days of Christmas Activities- Week 2

This week we played more games instead of making lots of crafts, but I'm thinking next week will be a very craft heavy week as we finalize some Christmas projects.  Here are the Christmas activities for week two!

Day 1-  Christmas Themed Tangrams- Addi was much better at this than I thought she was going to be!  We used paper and foam shapes that had been cut out.  This was actually one of the busy bags we had gotten and I hope I make more of the tangram games for other holidays throughout the year.

Day 2- For this Christmas felt board Addi had to put the current number of button ornaments on the tree according to the number on the star.  She did almost every number correct and was excited to put ALL the buttons on the tree before cleaning up.

Day 3- We made a snowman with paper plates, construction paper, cotton balls, and pom poms.  So much fun!

Day 4- In my family it was a Christmas tradition to decorate sugar cookies.  Now, here is a picture of the next generation participating in our family tradition.  I know it sounds so silly, but this melted my heart seeing them talk and work together on this.  I have such great memories of doing this with my grandmother and I'm so thankful to be able to pass this along to my little ones.

The final product after several were devoured. ;)

Day 5- We made a festive little wreath from Addilyn's sweet handprints and a few pom poms.

Day 6- Addilyn had so much fun with this activity.  We took pinecones and she decorated them with pom poms.  She could have done about 20 of these if I would have let her.  So funny!

Day 7- This game was also from our busy bag swap.  It's a "snowball" counting game.  Fun, fun, fun!

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