Josie's Gift

The girls love reading Josie's Gift.  It's a beautiful story about the true meaning of Christmas.



After reading Josie's Gift, the girls enjoyed setting up and playing with their felt board nativity set. 

 

 
Here is the link to last year's post about this nativity felt board set. 

The Sweet Smell of Christmas

The Sweet Smell of Christmas was our book of the day for Friday.  I love this book and remember reading it when every Christmas when I was a child.  My mom gave O(5) this copy on her first Christmas, and it's always a favorite. 


After we read the book, the girls and I made candy cane playdough.  Here is the basic recipe:

1 c. flour
1/2 cup salt
1 T. cooking oil
1 T. cream of tartar
1 c. water
Food coloring of your choice
Add-ins of your choice (i.e. spices, extracts, glitter, etc.)

Stir ingredients together well. Just measure them into the saucepan you will be using to cook the dough, but mix them well before heating up the pan. Over medium heat cook the dough, stirring constantly until it forms a ball.

Let the playdough cool and then knead until it's smooth.

The girls loved taking turns pouring in the ingredients, and they especially loved kneading the warm dough.  We ran out of salt, so we only made a half recipe, but we'll make more this week.  Homemade playdough makes great Christmas gifts! 

A Little Christmas Tree

Our book for last Wednesday was The Little Christmas Tree.



The girls made felt Christmas tree ornaments (from a kit) to go along with this book.

Snowmen at Night

Snowmen at Night isn't a Christmas book, but I decided to include in with our 24 books advent books since we love it so much, and I had a fun snow activity planned :) 





We made "snow dough"!  We mixed 12 cups of white flour with 1.5 cups of baby oil to make the snow dough, and it was SO much fun!  We kept adding in a little more baby oil, so we probably ended up with close to 1.75 cups of baby oil.




We put a few plastic animals in the dough, which E(2) really enjoyed.  O(5) loved "cooking" with the dough.


 




I had fun making snowballs :)  This was a pretty messy activity, so it's definitely one for the porch or yard!

Cookie Count

Our 4th day's book was Cookie Count by Robert Sabuda.  We love this book!  Our favorite page is the last page with the pop-up gingerbread cottage.



Our activity was decorating a gingerbread cottage, of course!  I always buy our gingerbread cottages after Christmas at half price.  That way I have a good excuse to not let the kids eat the candy and icing, and I save money! 

Our 2nd and 3rd Day Books and Activities

The Polar Express was the girls' second book to open this month.  The best thing about our Polar Express book is that it came with an audio book.  They have loved listening to it everyday on the way to and from school.  Their activity was to wear their warm footed pjs and drink hot chocolate while sitting on their grandparents' front porch to watch the trains go by.  Elliott and I were on a shopping and dinner date, but we heard that great fun was had by all!

The girls 3rd book was Franklin's Christmas Gift, and the activity was to choose and buy toys to donate to Toys for Tots.  I LOVE this book, and luckily, the girls do to.  It really motivates them to think about giving, and I think it's one we need to keep out and read all year long!

Our First Advent Activity

Our first advent book was Advent Storybook.  After reading the first story in the book, the girls used glitter and glue to decorate small wooden stars.  They LOVED this book and activity!









 
O(5) was excited to add a little glue and glitter to her fingertips!



 
After the stars were dry, I hot glued small clothes pins to the back and wrote the girls' names and the year on the back of each one.  We clipped them to our Christmas tree and to the tiny tree in the girls bedroom.

Our Advent "Calendar"

We have 24 Christmas books (wrapped in fabric bags) under our tree! Each bag has an activity in it (or a note card describing the activity) that relates to the book. This is the first year EVER that I have had all of our advent activities and books ready before December 1!

The girls love opening the bags to find the books, and the activities have been a success! I love Christmas!



Thanks to my mom for helping me get the books wrapped and the numbers on them!!!

Santa's Runaway Elf

Our Christmas book of the day for Saturday was Santa's Runaway Elf  Santa's Runaway Elf.  This book was given to Elliott when he was a baby, so it's been around for a while!  It's a sweet story about a tiny elf that is too tiny for any of the jobs that the other elves do, but he fits perfectly on Santa's shoulder.  I had a Martha Stewart elf puppet kit, which went along perfectly with this book.  O loved putting the puppet together as I read the directions to her, and we've had fun playing with our "Tiny" puppet ever since!

Our Gumdrop Tree

This is the 3rd year in a row that O and I have made a gumdrop tree (using the same styrofoam tree form...I think we can get one more year out it before throwing it away).  This is usually one of her favorite activities, but she didn't love it quite as much this year.  I think the main reason it wasn't quite as enjoyable this year is because we had to rush.  Nothing is quite as much fun when you have to hurry, and it seems like we've been in a constant state of "hurry" for the past 2 weeks.  I'm ready for things to slow down!

To make the gumdrop tree, we broke toothpicks in half and stuck them in the styrofoam tree form.  We then stuck gumdrops on the toothpicks.

Baking Cookies

We let O skip school on Tuesday, so that she could sleep late and have a good nap before she had to be at the auditorium for her Nutcracker performance.  We needed a quiet, calm activity, so baking cookies seemed like the perfect thing to do.

We took the easy way out and had frozen sugar cookie dough that we  thawed, rolled out (with a Kleen Kanteen since I can't find our rolling pin), and cut with cookie cutters.  E was excited to help us!




O loved pouring sprinkles on the cookies!



Our book of the day was Cookie Count by Robert Sabuda. 

Hot Chocolate and Chocolate Spoons

We did lots of Christmas activities on Saturday, and we all stayed in our pjs all day long.  I love pj days!  Our daily book was the Grinch.  After we read the book, we made chocolate spoons and hot chocolate with lots of marshmallows.  Then we watched the Grinch movie. 


To make the chocolate spoons, I melted semi-sweet chocolate pieces in the microwave.  We rolled the spoons in the melted chocolate until they were completely covered and then decorated them with sprinkles and marshmallows. We put the spoons in the freezer to harden before using them to stir our hot chocolate.  





Our hot chocolate was extra delicious since we stirred it with chocolate spoons!

After we finished our hot chocolate, we decorated our gingerbread house.  I always buy gingerbread house kits after Christmas when they are 50 to 75% off.  I pack them with our Christmas decorations, and when we decorate them, we have the perfect excuse to not eat that yucky candy and icing...it's too old!  We have lots of fun and no kiddos beg to eat candy :)




After we decorated our gingerbread house, we all took a nighttime pj ride to see the lights in our area.  Unfortunately, there was only one house with a lot of lights...we drove by it 4 times!  After the fourth time, O asked "why does daddy keep driving by the same house?"