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.

Gingerbread Peg Dolls

Happy Holidays!

The Little One and her parents have been going for walks in the evening checking out the lights.

My grand daughter loves it.

I decided to combine her interest in lights with a gingerbread theme play box.

I painted new peg dolls to look like gingerbread.

There is a mom, dad, sister and baby.

They are set up in a card board box that I have painted the inside.

Lights are hung from the ceiling of the box.

I also painted a wooden house with brown chalkboard paint.

She can use chalk to decorate it like a gingerbread house.

Even inside we drew some beds.

I added a couple of books and we've read them several times already.

I was a little slow getting a picture of her reading a book herself.

She was excited to show Dad when he got home from work.

The lights are poked through the top of the box and she is fascinated with them.

We've been retelling the story in different ways, drawing, video, oral.

It's one of my favourites.

I love catching moments like this when her parents get down and play with her.

Punked the Rotting Pumpkin

One of my favourite books to read in the fall and at Hallowe'en is Mousekin's Golden House.  It's an old book and I don't think it is printed any longer.  

(I managed to find this one at a Friends of the Library sale)

It's about a little mouse that makes his winter home in an old jack o'lantern.

Over the winter the mouse stays safe inside but the outside changes.

When Hallowe'en was over the Little One's parents were throwing their jack o'lanterns into the compost.

We rescued one, gave him a name, Punked, and left him in the back yard.

We visited it every few days,

and watched it change.

We noticed that something was nibbling on it.

Maybe it was a mouse!

On our morning walks we would look at other people's jack o'lanterns,

abandoned on the steps or lawn.

How have they changed?

Ours had certainly changed after just a couple of weeks.

We visited the library and borrowed Pumpkin Jack.

About a little boy that didn't want to throw his jack o'lantern away so put it back in the garden.

Eventually it rotted away but a few seeds were left inside and the following spring new plants began to grow.

That would have been a great idea but we didn't think of it at the time of carving.

Poor Punked.

There's not much left of him one month after Hallowe'en.