Creative uses for holiday cards..

The hostess of this playdate had the great idea to re-use holiday cards and cut them out, arrange them like a stable / manager scene and add some fun decor.

Wonderful activity for fine motor skills.

I didn't get a picture of the final product,

but you can see Julian working on his above.

Open Ended Art - Christmas Stocking

I was in crunch mode yesterday studying for my final exam (ugh!) so their craft today was open ended art (Click here for an explanation of what open ended art is for kids).

Yesterday, I set out green & red paper, christmas scrapbooking paper, cotton balls, crayons, markers, paint dabbers, glue and scissors and I let their imagination take off.

I always like Open Ended Art because it takes them time to complete their project (thus giving me time to study).

Julian's stocking...so cute.

Candy Cane Lane

We went to a playdate called "Candy Cane Lane". It started off with the host reading a book called J is for Jesus (you can find it here on Amazon, I highly recommend it).

Then, the kids made a candy cane craft and had some cookies (candy cane of course).

Thankful Tree

I got the wonderful idea of doing a Thankful tree from Brandy at Adventures of a Flake.

I remember she did one last year and I thought it was a great idea, so this year, we made our own. We used cardboard paper and I went to the library to cut out the leaves (using an old Ellison die cut machine!! LOL).

Everyday, every memeber of our home (including Aislinn on the days she is with us) will write something they are thankful for on a leaf and then we stick it to the wall. By the time Thanksgiving rolls around we will have a beautiful fall tree full of leaves.

I am also starting to incorporate bible lessons into my weekly lesson plans. Since we made our tree today, this weeks verse is:

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good. Psalm 118:1

I taught the kids a little jingle with the verse in it so they can learn it and memorize it.

Every week, I will choose a new verse.

Letter Tt Week

This is our Letter Tt tub. This was an easy letter week for them, easy as in, they learned the sound, words associated and recognition of the letter within a word quickly.

They even pointed out this cute plate that Julian made a few weeks ago and tried to "test" Thanks for the T sounds (tuh, tuh, thanks) and it didn't work. So I had to semi explain that Thanks does start with a T but it has an H after which makes a th sound. I love that they were so proactive in learning though.

We read a story about Time, which worked out great because I have been meaning to start talking to them about time telling. We will get more into that soon.

As with every Letter, we made the letter Tt and they had the option to use toilet paper and/or toothpicks. Julian had attempted to use toilet paper with his open ended art last week and didn't like it being stuck to his finger because of the glue, so he stuck to just toothpicks this time.

Aislinn used TP and toothpicks.

This next turkey project was the best craft I have done all year!!! First of all, a great learning tool and helped reinforce the letters they are already very familiar with and helped to remind them of the others that we haven't gotten to. Also, this craft last like 45 min. They were both very detailed and they took their time in accomplishing it. I loved it!!! I kept looking at the time and thinking wow, its been 20 min, then 30 min, then 40. LOL. I will duplicate this over and over with a rainbow, a slide, etc. Be on the look out for it.

They had to glue the corresponding letter to the correct space and then color their turkey.

Here is the template for anyone interested!

This site is a great resource.

I showed them some numbers to see how they would do with recognizing the letter Tt and they were champs, so we moved onto harder things :)

I quickly typed up a story about a Turtle named Tommy that lost his Tooth. There were soooooo many T's in the story, they had a blast highlighting the T's and finding them. I kept telling them it was like a scavenger hunt.

Open Ended Art - Black and White

Open ended art gives children free creativity, allowing the child to create art, how he/she sees it. I didn't invent open ended art, I simple saw the idea from Adventures of a Flake and Mommies Wise Little Bookworms.

The open ended art theme was balck and white.

This was a project that only Julian did.

In his words, he created a scary ghost. :)

Making Scarecrows...

First off, let me say a huge THANKS to the wonderful organizer of our playgroup, Brandy at Adventures of a Flake, for setting this playdate up. I had been looking forward to it for a while and we really loved our final product.

Aislinn stuffing the "head".

It was a little harder than it looks. I ended up doing the head stuffing. LOL

Julian drawing his "scary" face.

Onto the task of actually stuffing the scarecrow.

Julian dancing with his scarecrow.

Most of the kids snuck in some hay time play.

Look how cute, they are holding hands LOL

Monster Hands

We went to another PAL'shouse to make scary monster hands.

Dress up Time

I pulled out some costumes. Aislinn was a flower girl / princess and Julian looks like he was buzzlight year, but he said he was a prince.

They were dancing in this pic. It was really cute.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

We read this childhood favorite and also watched an animated version of it on YouTube. The kids loved the animated version so much that they watch it over and over.

After we read and watched the book, we made our own very hungry caterpillar's for our very hungry cater-kids!! They had fun getting to their hands covered in frosting and using the pretzels for feet.

Musical Mania

My son, Julian, loves music and loves playing in his own band. So I came up with an idea of hosting a musical playdate in my home and invited our PALS. We made several instruments, played in a band, and danced to different music.

Miss A* was decorating her tambourine.

They also made Maracas and egg shakers.

Julian playing the drums with a paint can.

We call these noise makers.