Book Play - The Mitten

Last year my grand daughter's favourite book was The Mitten.

I pulled it out again to see if the interest was still there.

To make it inviting I sewed some felt together to make this winter scene.

A soft, white mitten was sewn to the felt too.

I hid all the animals in the mitt.

The bear came out and said 'gr, gr'.

The fox was hard to take out because of his long tail.

The raccoon tried to climb into a tree then he went to the river to find a fish.

  

The animals explored the winter scene, walking on the snow, climbing in the trees, splashing in the water and hiding under a snow tunnel.

My grand daughter had fun playing but the interest isn't the same as last year and that's ok.

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

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.