Our Ballerina

O(7) was a Land of the Sweets Candy Cane Attendant in a recent performance of the Nutcracker Ballet.  She was only onstage for about 30 seconds, but it was a great experience and she loved it.

Both of our girls LOVE The Nutcracker Ballet, and several of their advent activities/gifts have revolved around this ballet.  We frequently read our Nutcracker books, and they have loved watching the dvd recently.  They also love the Dover Nutcracker coloring books.

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Our Gingerbread House

The girls and I are continuing our Christmas tradition of opening a Christmas book and doing a Christmas activity as our countdown to Christmas.  I'm not nearly as organized with this as I was last year, but it's just as much fun when it's thrown together :)

About a week ago, we built and decorated our gingerbread cottage.  It's a Christmas miracle that it didn't fall down!  We propped it up with magnatiles until the icing dried.  It looks a little rough, but we had fun making it and that's all that matters to us!






We love the book that always goes along with our gingerbread cottage activity, Cookie Count.

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The Nutcracker

One of the girls' books of the day a couple of weeks ago was The Nutcracker.  The girls LOVE this book!


We started taking O(6) to see The Nutcracker ballet when she was 2, and she has danced in the ballet for the past 3 years (she was a mouse this year).  E(3) saw her first Nutcracker ballet at age 1, and she has been completely mesmerized every time she has seen it.  So, it's no surprise that they love the book!
For the go-along activity, they put together a paper Nutcracker (that I bought from Dollar General).  Coincidentally, my mom came to keep the girls on the day that they opened this book, and she had an AMAZING Nutcracker music box for them.


The girls LOVE this music box and have spent many hours staring at the dancers and then dancing to the music.  E(3) has started snuggling down under our tiny Christmas tree while hugging her Nutcracker doll...she loves to pretend to be Clara.  She also dances all around the room while holding and looking lovingly at her Nutcracker doll  She is so sweet.
E(3) gets pretty creative when she plays with her music box and playmobil figures!

Cutting Coffee Filter Snowflakes...Or Not!

The Christmas Alphabet was our book of the day one day last week, and both girls really like this book.


This page was the inspiration for our go-along activity which was folding and cutting coffee filters to make snowflakes.


I cut a snowflake to show the girls how to do it.  They oohed and ahhed and said it was beautiful.  Then they started working on their own coffee filter creations.
O(6) decided that she'd rather make a butterfly than a snowflake, so she got right to work painting her coffee filter.





E(3) colored her coffee filter with markers and then folded it in half and clipped a clothes pin to it.  It was a fan, and she was an Egyptian fan bearer.  Then E requested a peacock, and the girls worked on it for more than an hour.
Here is the peacock in progress.  LOTS of glue, duct tape, coffee filters, time, love, and persistence went into making this beautiful peacock!


After they finished the peacock, E requested a clamshell and described exactly how she wanted it made.  The 3 of us worked on it together, and she was very happy with it.  Unfortunately, I can't find it to take a picture.
Evidently, coffee filters make the perfect cozy bed for tiny toys!  Who knew that coffee filters could be so much fun???

Great Joy

We usually give the girls one or 2 new Christmas books each year to add to our collection, and this year they recieved Great Joy.  This is a sweet book that we have all enjoyed reading.


The go-along activity for this book was our felt board nativity scene.  E(3) LOVES nativity scences (she calls them "activity" scenes), so she was thrilled with this new "flat activity" scene :)


This nativity scene came from Activity Village.  It's printed on white cardstock. I glued a small piece of sandpaper to the back of each piece so that it would stick to the felt.     

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Crystallized Snowflakes

The girls, my niece, mom, and I had fun making crystallized snowflakes after reading the book, Snowflake Bentley.  We love this book, and the activity was fun and educational...a craft and science project all rolled into one!

To make crystallized snowflakes (and stars and initials), we made snowflakes using pipecleaners.  I dissolved   3 tablespoons of borax to 1 cup of boiling water (I made at least 6 batches of the solution) and poured the mixture over the pipe cleaner objects that we'd placed in glass pyrex containers.  After about 24 hours, we had crystals!  The girls were SO excited!

After the crystals grew for a while, we took them out of the borax solution and placed them on wax paper to dry.

We made these snowflakes a few years ago, but haven't done it again until now because I was afraid E(3) might put the crystals in her mouth, and they are dangerous.  Now that she is old enough to understand the danger and avoid it, we can do this project again!

Here's a link to the previous post from 2009.

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Homemade Snow Globe

One of the girls' Christmas activities last week was to make snow globes (I have no idea which book this activity goes with...I can't keep track anymore!).  O(6) did not want to make a snowglobe, but E(3) and I had fun with it.


We hot glued the Santa toy onto the jar top.  We filled the jar with water, corn syrup, and glitter.


We put the top on the jar and turned it upside down and shook.  E(3) was proud!

Christmas Tree "I Spy" Jars

The girls love The Little Christmas Tree which was their book of the day on December 4th.


Our super fun and simple activity to go along with this book was to make Christmas tree "I Spy" jars.


To make the I Spy jars, we filled glass tree jars with green split peas and Christmas buttons and/or miniature ornaments (with the strings taken off).  Before putting the buttons/ornaments in the jars, I took a pictures of the objects so we would know what to search for.  We've had a lot of fun twisting and turning the jars to find the tiny objects hidden inside!

This original jar is an old one that my mom gave me last year (I had this idea then, but waited until this year to actually do it).  The gift jars came from Walmart.  The miniature ornaments and Christmas buttons came from Michael's.

The girls and I had fun making these fun jars for their friends and cousins.  I decided to not glue the jars shut because I thought people might want to change the objects out or use the jars in some other way.  I'm pretty sure this was a mistake because the tops come off the jars fairly easily, and we've already had a couple of spills at my house.  At least the girls will get lots of sweeping practice :)