Old St Nicholas Had a Tree (with Signing)

I've done a post on this Christmas song in the past 

This year I added sign language to it.

Check out video to learn the signs then go to the past post to hear the song.

Merry Christmas

The Twins Christmas Tree

For my younger grand daughters (they just turned 1) I made a tree from a cardboard box.

I found these amazing screws, for cardboard, at a store in Vancouver.

They work like a charm and hold the cardboard pieces together so simply and firmly.

I cut one hole in each side and finished off the edges with tape.

I gave the girls a basket each full of balls.

 Some balls were smooth, ruff, prickly, small, big, rubber, plastic and some have lights inside that shine when they are hit or dropped.

After they spent time checking out all the balls I showed them how the balls can disappear into the tree.

The balls that light up are great motivators for the little ones to look through the holes.

 It didn't take them long to figure out to drop the ball through the hole

but getting it out again was a challenge.

 These two are quite physical so it wasn't a surprise to see the tree tipped on to it's side.

 Which seemed like a perfect invitation to go inside.

If one tries it then the other often does too.

I think they like all the balls the best.

A couple of days later I visited again to see they were trying to get the ball out through the hole.  I noticed that she tried with both arms.

When that didn't work she went around to the open end.

It may be a proud Nana talking but I think they are clever.

Decorating a Tree

Talking with my daughters, leading up to Christmas, they were both wondering if they should put up a real tree yet.  Or would their little ones be too curious and try to pull it down?

For my oldest grand daughter I found this big felt tree.

It is a big cone and has velcro that holds it together.

(makes it easy to flatten and store through the year).

She was excited to discover  all the decorations

and took time check out each one.

On the tree there are lots of red pompoms.

Each felt ornament has a string attached so it can be looped over the pompoms.

 I thought this would be challenging for her but she managed very well.

For a younger child the felt ornaments will easily stick to the felt tree.

Finally there is a star that sits on top.

They added lights and now have a toddler friendly Christmas tree.

Tomorrow I'll share what I made for the one year old twins.

Gingerbread Felt Man

I just love finding a great piece at the Dollar store.

Here is a felt gingerbread man with felt pieces to decorate.

It would have cost me much more to buy the felt and make this myself.

All I added was magnet strips to the back of the body so it could hang on the fridge instead of using a felt board.  

I'm always looking for things to use in the kitchen to keep her busy while I'm making dinner or cleaning up.

Here are a few of our ginger people:

She had to give the crying ginger kid a hug.

And of course we had to try moustaches on ourselves.

Roll a Dice and Decorate the Tree Game

I have been teaching Baby Sign Language classes to parents and educators this fall and I wanted a game that would include numbers and colours.

With Christmas happening soon I thought it would be fun to create a game that I could try with my grand daughter.

So that is how Roll a Rice and Decorate a Tree game came to be.

 The dice are made from small wooden cubes.

The tree is cardboard covered with felt.

And the lights (or leaves) are felt too.

The idea is to roll both dice, count the dots, decide on the colour rolled then add that many lights to the tree.

This is her first time using a die so she spent a lot of time figuring out how to maneuver it in her hands and drop it.

I tried encouraging her by rolling the die with dots while she rolled the one with colours.

In this game, I believe, are too many steps for her age.

I will try to create one where she can roll the die and then just match it to the colour.

Homemade Wrapping Paper

Make wrapping paper.

Here is a very easy and fun activity to keep your little one busy on a rainy day.

I covered the kitchen table with a plastic table cloth, rolled out paper

and then painted her hands to make prints.

She liked it.

Some children may not like the feel of paint on their hands though so you may want to skip it and go on to just giving them a paint brush.

She really enjoyed the independence of painting with the brush.

The main problem was that she couldn't reach very far across the paper.

So I had to turn it for her.

The fridge makes a perfect drying rack.

Oh another idea is to use cookie cutters that they stamp in the paint and then on to the paper.

Have fun.