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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Our Gumdrop Tree

One of our favorite traditions is making our gumdrop tree each year.  The girls and I break toothpicks in half, stick them in a styrofoam tree form, and stick gumdrops on the toothpicks.  We always love this activity.


This is at least the 4th year that we've done this activity, and we've always used the same styrofoam tree form!  I thought that last year would be the last year for it, but it lasted one more year.  However, as we were building the tree, the top started to crumble.  So, the tree form will be going into the trash after Christmas this year.  I hate to use styrofoam, but using the same form for 4 years makes me feel a little less guilty about it :)


We were excited that the girls' cousin was visiting and helped us make our gumdrop tree!

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!

An Old-Fashioned Christmas Playdate

The girls, my niece, mom, friends, and I had a wonderful time at the old fashioned Christmas playdate that we hosted this week! 

We set up 4 "old time" activities for the children...making clove oranges, stringing popcorn, writing with a quill pen and ink, and making corn husks angels.



We started with the simplest activity...pushing cloves into oranges.  E(3) needed help, but she still had a great time.  The oranges and cloves smelled wonderful!



O(6) was proud of her clove heart!



Next, they had fun stringing popcorn.  I made the strings too long, so no one finished, but they had lots of fun stringing and eating popcorn!

The girls loved making the corn husks dolls.  They all decided that they'd rather have girls rather than angels.  That was fine with me because I wasn't sure how to make the wings!



They wrote their names with quill pen and ink (the ink spilled everywhere, but, luckily, it didn't get on their dresses).


My mom made Brunswick stew for lunch (it was delicious) with hasty pudding with syrup for dessert.


After they finished eating lunch, each girl chose a piece of old-fashioned ribbon candy.


Since it was a beautiful day, they all went out to play in the deck playhouse.  We veered into "new times" when they got out the plastic battery operated cash register and set up a store on the deck.  I brought out the popcorn balls that we had made the night before, and they sold them in their store :)


Each child chose a Victorian cracker for a surprise.  (I'm SO glad that I remembered that I had these...at the very last minute!  I bought them after Christmas last year from World Market...75% off!)


O(6) set up bowls of old-fashioned peppermints around the house, and the girls ate a million of them throughout the day!


The girls eventually moved the party outside and had lots of fun playing on the joggling board and swingset. 







All 5 girls were wearing beautiful handmade dresses made by Cheri at Ashley's Attic.
We had 3 Prairie girls (here, here, and here), a Victorian girl, and a Colonial girl!  Cheri is offering a 10% discount at her store when you use the coupon code chasingcheerios. 

This playdate was so much fun and simple to plan and carry out.  Five little girls was the perfect number, and I hope that we'll do this again soon!
 

Our Fun Christmas Centerpiece

Here's our most recent Christmas centerpiece for our Christmas table.  The girls and their cousin have had fun setting up this scene on a cake stand using Playmobil figures and fake snow.  Fun!