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.

Who Lives in a Tree?

I built a tree around our tube stand and cut out some holes for our stuffed animals to live inside.

The Little One loved it!

The bird's nest is right at her level so that was the first stuffy to come out.

Once it was out she played with the flap, opening and closing it.

Then she decided to put her baby doll inside.

Next onto exploring the rest of the animals that live in a tree.

We have a fox, raccoon, deer, squirrels, chipmunk, skunk, eagle, robin, owl, crow and baby birds in a nest.

One day I caught her using her saw pretending to cut the hole.

I found these paint sticks at Michaels when I had a half off coupon.

We decided to try them out to colour our tree.

They work great.

They go on smooth, there is no dripping and they dry quickly.

While our tree dried we visited the Little One's cousins and went for a walk.

We saw these decorated trees.

All wrapped to keep them warm for winter?

 Back at home we had one more thing to do to our tree and that was to add some more leaves.

The Little One loves tape and had fun putting the leaves on, taking them off and putting them on again.

We think it looks pretty good.