Felt Gingerbread Village with Playmobil Guests

I love our felt gingerbread village (that I made when O was 2...I think). Typically, the girls don't love it nearly as much as I do, but they have had fun incorporating their Christmas playmobil figures into the village!









E(3) especially loves to set up "scenes" and spends a lot of time playing with all things tiny and pretend :)

Christmas Waterbeads Sensory Bin

The girls and I had fun putting together a sensory bin full of red waterbeads, bowls, spoons, and bottles.  They had a great time playing with it!


E(3) loved using measuring spoons to put the waterbeads in a bottle!


I love this kind of activity, and luckily, the girls do, too!  (Btw, I planned to have red AND green waterbeads, but all of the green waterbeads turned red while they were growing!)

Cookie Count - Day 11

Cookie Count by Robert Sabuda was our book of the day for Dec. 11.  This book is always a favorite, and the last pop-up of a gingerbread house is the inspiration for the go-along activity.


As the go-along activity, we built and decorated a gingerbread village!  As I've mentioned in past years, I like to buy gingerbread cottage kits after Christmas (when the are 75% off), so that when we build them the girls are not tempted to sneak and eat the candy and icing (and I only pay about 2 dollars for the whole kit...candy, icing, cookies, and all!).  I love that we can concentrate on being creative and having fun building and decorating without the temptation of eating the candy.  The girls had no problem with this AT ALL (surprisingly), but Elliott was disappointed that the candy was too old to eat.  (He made me promise to never buy old gingerbread house kits again because he wants to eat the house next time...we'll see).





To us, these houses are beautiful!





Being able to spend a Tuesday morning building and decorating gingerbread cottages, drinking hot chocolate, and listening to Christmas music really makes me appreciate the flexibility of homeschooling and of Elliott's flexible work schedule!

Jolly Old Santa Claus - Day 12

Jolly Old Santa Claus was our book of the day on Dec. 12th.  I was very sick on this day, so we didn't read the book or do the activity until the next day.  Luckily, I'd put a playmobil Santa Claus in  the bag with the book, so setting up the Santa and angel and playing with it was a perfect independent activity for the girls while their sick mama wallowed in misery :)


The go-along activity for this book was making a felt Santa Christmas ornament.  I bought this craft kit from Michael's last year after Christmas ....so it was about 75% off the original price...my kind of sale!

The girls really enjoyed making their Santa ornaments.  O(6) was determined to make her Santa look EXACTLY like the picture on the package, and she did a great job!


E(3) was adamant that Santa's beard was actually his hair.  She was also certain that his eyes were his eyebrows, and the holly berries were his eyes.  I love her creative version of Santa!

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Our Elves are Back!

The girls were excited to see that our elves came back a few days ago!  Our elves aren't naughty or creative like a lot of elves out there in blog land.  They just like to hang out in high places around our house.

I'm not really keen on encouraging the girls to behave nicely just because they think someone is watching them and reporting back to Santa, so the elves are really more about the excitement of finding them each morning and then checking on them throughout the day to see if we can catch them blinking :)

O(6) recently wrote a note for the elves to take to Santa.  When she told me about it, I expected it to be a wish list, but she just told Santa that she loves him....so sweet.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer - Day 13

Our Christmas book of the day was Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Both girls love this story, and I was able to haltingly read it despite my very sore throat....I had to whisper my way through a few pages...gotta love the flu :(

Our go-along activity was making a reindeer paper chain.  This reindeer paper chain craft pack came from Dollar General.  It was cute and easy to do.  We had fun making it, and it was the perfect simple activity for this sick mama to do with my girls.

The girls were proud to hang our reindeer paper chain on our wall.

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Dream Snow- Day 8

Dream Snow was the girls' Christmas book of the day on December 8.  We all love the book, and the girls LOVED, LOVED, LOVED the activity that went along with it!

Since we often dream of snow, but rarely get it, I decided that Insta-Snow would be the perfect thing to go along with the book, Dream Snow!  (I bought the Insta-Snow from Oriental Trading more than a year ago and promptly forgot about it, which worked out well :)




The girls took turns measuring the Insta-Snow powder and the water and then mixing it together.  It was fun to watch how quickly the powder turned into "snow."












We had fun trying to make snowballs, but they fell apart immediately.


We tried to build a mini snowman, but this was also unsuccessful.


They were trying to make mini snow angels with their hands...love it!


Insta-snow is supposed to last for about a month, so we are looking forward to many more days of fake snow fun!

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