The Sweet Smell of Christmas- Day 2

The girls were so excited to open their 2nd Christmas book!

We all love The Sweet Smell of Christmas, and it reminds me of my childhood since it's a book that my mom read to me every Christmas.  Our activity to go along with this book was making a "humongo" gingerbread man!

They worked together to mix the ingredients to make the dough (we used a bag mix, so it was only 3 ingredients...I felt only slightly guilty at taking the easy way out and not making the cookie from scratch).


They had fun pressing the dough into the gingerbread shaped pan.


They loved decorating their gingerbread girl (they named her Sally) with green and red m & m's.

There was time for an impromptu ballet performance while Sally baked.

And she's done!

At first they said they couldn't bear to eat her, but they quickly changed their minds and had slice with a mug of hot chocolate!

I noticed E(3) watching me out of the corner of her eye, so I grabbed the camera and caught her licking her hot chocolate from her placemat :)

What a fun night!

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Christmas Countdown - Day 1

Our Christmas tradition is to have the girls open one Christmas book per day that we read and then do a related activity.  The girls were SUPER excited to open their first book yesterday!

Here's the first book nicely wrapped in a fabric Christmas bag handmade by my wonderful mom!



Their first book is the Advent Storybook, and we read one story from it each day.


Their "activity" was really more of a gift than an activity...a playmobil advent calendar!  I don't know if they were more excited or if I was!


E(3) was upset that the first item in the calendar was a tree and not a person because she wanted to "talk" it.  She quickly took some of her nativity figures and incorporated them into the winter scene so that she would have somebody to "talk."


We LOVE the playmobil advent calendars...this is the first one we've had at Christmas, but we used the Princess Wedding advent calendar to countdown to E's 3rd birthday, and it was HUGE hit!

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If You Take a Mouse to the Movies

One of our advent books was If You Take a Mouse to the Movies and our activity was to string popcorn.  O(5) and I had fun stringing the popcorn, and I think this will be one of our Christmas traditions.

We hung the popcorn on a tree outside along with a couple of cranberry wreaths.  Decorating a tree for the birds and squirrels was also one of our advent activities to go along with the Gift of Christmas.

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing

Dream Snow & Coffee Filter Snowflakes

Dream Snow was one of our advent books from last week, and we finally found time to do the activity last night!



Cutting snowflakes from coffee filters is one of the simplest activities we've done so far!  It's SO much better than cutting them from typical paper!  We didn't follow any directions, but just folded and cut.  O(5) cut one of hers without folding it at all which she thought was really fun.  E(2) and I cut ours together, and we had fun folding the coffee filters and cutting little triangles all over it.  This is definitely an activity that we'll be doing again this winter.  Maybe next time we'll dip our coffee filters in dye to make rainbow snowflakes!
 

The Cat Who Climbed The Christmas Tree

We love this book!  When we read it, I tell the girls about how our cat, Gracie, used to climb the Christmas tree when she was a kitten.  This is hard for the girls to believe since our sweet Gracie is now 11 years old and doesn't go near the Christmas tree anymore.


Our go along activity was to make beaded candy canes.  O(5) really enjoyed this activity, and I was so glad because I've offered this craft to her for the past 2 years and she hasn't been interested.  I remember making candy cane ornaments just like this when I was a girl scout, so it's fun to make them with my sweet girls!

Laura's Christmas Star

Laura's Christmas Star was one of our advent books.  I'm sure it's a good book, but we haven't read it yet.  It was our advent book on a very busy day, and we didn't read the book that day....and now I can't find it.



The go-along activity was to make a glitter star wand.  O(5) loved decorating her wand with LOTS of glitter and glue.  E(2) took a nap while O did this, and she hasn't decorated her wand yet. 



 
Keeping up with our daily Christmas books and activities is harder than I anticipated!  While we make time to read aloud every day, we don't always have time to craft.  Sometimes, it's just more fun to play outside and dance and sing and play dress-up (which is mostly how we spend our days!).

Handprint Reindeer Ornaments

Our 2nd activity after reading our Rudolph books was to make Rudolph handprint ornaments. 




To make these adorable ornaments, I painted the girls hands brown with acrylic craft paint.  I pressed their hands onto white cardstock.  After the paint was dry, they glued the eyes and pompom noses onto the handprint reindeer.  Simple, fast, and fun!

A Merry Little Christmas

We love A Merry Little Christmas!  The illustrations are very detailed and adorable. 



Our activity to go along with this book was to attend a family Christmas party :)

The Grinch

Watching the Grinch movie is always one of my favorite Christmas activities.  The girls opened the book and watched the movie for an advent activity. 



We made delicious hot chocolate to drink while we watched the movie.  They had whipped cream and crushed peppermint on top of their hot chocolate.  We made chocolate dipped candy canes for them to stir their hot chocolate, but E(2) decided that she did not want her candy cane dipped in chocolate (I was very surprised about that!).  This was a fun and simple advent activity that we plan to repeat every year.

Thumbprint Rudolph Ornaments

We read 2 Rudolph books as our advent books one day last week, and the girls enjoyed both of them.




After we read our books, the girls and I made several Rudolph ornaments.  These thumbprint Rudolph ornaments were the so easy to make and turned out so cute!



To make these ornaments, I painted the girls' thumbs brown and pressed them onto these small glass ball ornaments.  After they dried, I drew in the antlers, eyes, and nose with sharpie markers.  I wrote the girls' names and the year on the back of the ornaments. 

The idea for this ornament came from here via Pinterest.

Toby's Holiday Hugs and Kisses

Both girls LOVE the Toby books, and this Christmas Toby book is no exception.  Most of the Toby books have come from the Dollar Tree (which makes me like them even more since I got a good deal on them!).



The activities of the day were to hug and bake cookies.  I was working on the day of this activity, so my mom baked cookies with the girls.  (I planned it this way, since she loves to bake and I do not).   The girls and their Guhguh loved making forgotten cookies for O's teachers and Elliott's coworkers.  I'm hoping my mom will let me share the recipe in another post because these cookies are divine!!!

Bear Stays Up for Christmas

Both girls LOVE Bear Stays Up for Christmas!



 

Our go-along activity was making handmade gifts for our family and friends just like Bear did!  We had a busy day of making!  (more on the gifts in other posts)

Jingle Bells

Jingle Bells is another favorite book from my childhood!  E(2) really loves it and requests that we read it often.



After we read Jingle Bells, I made jingle shakers for the girls.  I used a hot glue gun to attach a bell to a craft stick.  The girls ran around shaking them and singing and dancing.  E dropped one shaker, and it immediately broke.  O(5) dropped BOTH of hers to see if they would break...they did (I was not a happy mama).  So, a few days later, I reglued them using craft glue.  They seem to be a little sturdier...so far.

Queen of Christmas

The Queen of Christmas was a recent advent book for us, and the girls both enjoyed it. 



After Elliott read the book to them, they wrote their letters to Santa (with help).  I printed the letters from Lily and Thistle which made the process fairly simple.  Here's the link.   O(5) has asked Santa to bring mini Marie-Grace and Cecile dolls, and she'd also like buttons (for her button collection) and Indian beads.  E(2) would like a tiny pretend pig and a hankerchief (at one point, she was saying she wanted a "buh-loo (blue) hankerchief from Awaska (Alaska)."  Thank goodness, she's no longer being so specific because that's just not do-able!

A Magical Christmas & A Gumdrop Tree

A Magical Christmas was one of our advent books. 



Our go-along activity was decorating our gumdrop tree, which is always a favorite activity for the girls!  (we're still using the same styrofoam tree form...4 years in a row, but I think this is the last year for it!)
 
The girls were very creative with the tree this year!



 
Here's the finished tree!  They were so excited to be finished because I let them each eat a couple of gumdrops after they were done.



O(5) was upset that you couldn't see the cotton balls in the first picture, so I rotated it and took a few more...she is PROUD of this gumdrop tree!



 
She calls the top a "double decker extra."