I have the absolute pleasure of being a guest poster over at notimeforflashcards with my ‘Make a Wish Tree‘ craft.
Please pop over to have a look.
If you don’t know notimeforflashcards already you’re in for a treat as it’s packed full of great ideas to nurture your child.
Do you send out Thank You cards for the presents your children receive at Christmas? It’s something I like to encourage mine to do. Today we’ve had a snowman production line on the go using our favourite material of the moment – cotton wool. You might have seen the earlier Snowman Pictures we made, or the shepherd’s nativity scene, but this time we went for a flat cotton pad rather than balls.
We used: white card, 2 cotton wool pads per snowman, black and orange felt tips, PVA glue and some silver sequins as snowflakes (left over from the Dove of Peace decorations).
I think the pictures are pretty much self-explanatory but I would say drawing on the cotton wool is a little tricky but easily solved if you stick with a ‘dot’ design.
My 3 year old managed hers all by herself so it’s a nice craft for preschoolers as well as older children.
Don’t you think they look jolly?
What are you going to do with all your Christmas cards? Three quick ideas to re-use them before they go in the recycling bin…
1. Easiest of all – simply save them til next year. Stash them away with your Christmas decorations and then come Christmas 2010 you’ll have a pile of cards ready for your children to cut, stick and craft with.
2. Make a memory game. You can make a ‘match the pairs’ game which will help develop your child’s memory and turn-taking skills. This works best with card which are all of a similar size. Depending on the age of the children playing it is probably best to select cards which are distinctive: in the picture above you can see I’ve chosen a card which is mainly white, one which is mainly green, one which is mainly purple , and so on. I’m playing with a 3 yr old so want to give her some fairly easy ones to match together. With older children you can make them more difficult.
Using just the front of each card, cut them in half.
Jumble them up and place them face down on the table or floor.
Now you’re ready to start playing. Player one turns over 2 of the cards. If they match, they can keep the cards. If they don’t match, they have to be turned back over. Player 2 has a go.
Keep alternating turns, collecting any cards which match, until all the pairs have been matched up. They player with the most pairs is the winner.
What you’re encouraging your child to do is develop their visual memory so they can remember when the matching pairs are, so they can turn them over when it’s their turn. Of course, especially with younger children, you can give a few clues to help them – it’s about having fun and developing a skill, rather than getting frustrated because it’s too hard.
3. Alternatively why not make some jigsaws? For young children, this works best with cards which have a recognisble picture rather an abstract design. You’ll see we used a Santa card and a nativity scene.
All you need to do is cut up the card, jumble the pieces and let them jigsaw away to make the picture again (and again and again and again in the case of my currently jigsaw-crazy daughter).
School holidays are here ! I’ve had a houseful of children busy making Gingerbread Christmas Trees this afternoon – and aren’t the cute? We used my old favourite gingerbread recipe for the dough and stamped out lots of trees – you could either do this with the children or prepare the biscuits in advance and hand over to the children to add the baubles.
To decorate the trees we used tubes of writing icing, silver balls and sugar flowers. The icing can be used as tinsel or a blob of it makes the ‘glue’ you need to stick the silver balls and flowers to the tree. Let the children go wild and see what they can create.
If you make a hole at the top of each tree before baking you could thread a ribbon through and hang on the real tree. Or you could bag them up in cellophane to give as gifts. We just ate ours!
Everyone knows Santa comes to the home of good little boys and girls, but if you want to make sure his reindeer know to stop off at your house you need some delicious reindeer food. You can get it ready now and then, on Christmas Eve, you need to sprinkle it outside your front door. The recipe’s secret ingredient will attract those greedy reindeer straight to your house.
(This makes a great pre-school / kindergarten or charity fundraiser as your children can make lots of little bags to sell to raise money.)
Here’s how to make it:
1. Pop some oats (reindeer favourite) in a bowl and add the secret ingredient: glitter.
2. Mix them up and add some extra glitter for good measure. It’s going to be dark out there so you’ll need all the sparkle you can get to catch the reindeer’s eye.
3. Pour the mixture in to a little bag and keep safe until Christmas Eve. We used a glassine bag but cellophane tied up with a ribbon, or even an envelope, will work just as well. Then, the night before Christmas, just before you go to bed, snip a hole in the bag and sprinkle the food outside your house. Then off to bed and the reindeer should come!
This is one of our special Advent activities.
The first in our series ’101 Things To Do With a Paper Plate’! (This is one of our special Advent Activities)
Isn’t she pretty? Just what you need to grace the top of your Christmas tree. And easy-peasy to make. All you need is:
a paper plate
pencil
scissors
stapler
stickers / pens to decorate
glue and glitter for added sparkle
1. Draw the outline shown below on your paper plate (on the side you’d put the food).
2. Cut along the lines.
3. On the reverse side draw on a face and arms and decorate as you wish.
4. Fold back the body part and staple at the back.
5. If you want your angel to stand on a flat surface you can weight the front with a little blue tac – or she can take her place at the top of the tree.
Here are the children’s masterpieces – aren’t they beautiful?
We have updated our Autumn number line today with 10 beautiful Christmas trees. The number line hangs in the kitchen window and is proving really useful as it’s always on hand when any of the children have a question about numbers. We refer to it a lot and I have particularly noticed my 3 year old is now very interested in counting and also on the look out for numbers when we’re out and about. I’m sure having the number line in a prominent position is helping her.
We made our trees using a great idea from Notimeforflashcards which used a fork dipped in paint to create the needles on the tree. (If you don’t already know this blog you should take a look as it’s full of great ideas.) We then went sticker crazy to add some decorations. I did think about having 1 bauble on tree number one, 2 on tree number two and so on – but the kids were so enthusiastic with the stickers I just let them go for it. They were singing carols while they merrily decorated their trees! We sorted them in size order to give a visual link to the fact that the numbers are increasing – and then pegged them up.
Here are some ideas on how to make writing your letter to Santa a learning experience.
1. Making a card is great exercise for little fingers – peeling stickers,cutting, drawing, writing, fitting the card into an envelope are all good ways to work on your child’s fine motor skills and improve dexterity.
2. Help your child to write the letter. Talk about how we start (Dear…) and finish (Love from…) a letter. Even if you have a very young child let them have a try at ‘writing’ their name – maybe they can just make a mark or do the first letter of their name. What’s important is to encourage them to try and value what they can manage. They’re learning how to hold a pencil and that writing has a purpose.
3. Talk about how every envelope needs to be addressed. Do they know their own address? Do they know Santa’s? (‘Father Christmas, The North Pole’ works for us). If you have a map or, even better, a globe show them where the North Pole is. You can see some pictures of the North Pole here and here
4. Go and buy your stamp, pop it on the letter and post it. Talk about the postman who’ll collect it and how it’ll find it’s way to the North Pole.
Hope you get what you asked for!
Our house smells like Christmas today! We made some stained glass Christmas cookies, one of our favourite Christmas activities. They are easy to make using my basic gingerbread recipe (see below for a few adaptations) and look amazing. (This is one of our Advent Calendar activities)
stained glass Christmas cookies
Ingredient list:
14 oz plain flour
4 teaspoons ground ginger
2 teaspoons mixed spice
6 oz butter
4 tablespoons golden syrup
4 oz sugar
2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
2 desert spoon of water
some red boiled sweets (we used one per cookie, but it depends what size you have)
a large and a small heart shaped cookie cutter (the small one needs to fit into the big one with a border of at least 1cm all round)
good non-stick baking paper and some baking trays
1. Preheat the oven to gas mark 5 / 190 C and grease two baking trays with butter. Get your ingredients ready.
2. Sift the flour and spices into a bowl.
3.Heat the butter, sugar and golden syrup in a pan, but don’t let them boil.
4. Pour the butter mix into the flour and spices.
5. Dissolve the bicarbonate of soda in the water and add to the mixture. Stir the ingredients together.
6. Knead it into a ball and then roll out on to a floured surface. Cut out a large heart shaped cookie. Then cut out a small heart shape from the centre of the big heart.
7. Place the hearts onto a non-stick baking paper on a baking tray. Pop a boiled sweet into each heart space. DON’T FORGET – to make a small hole in each cookie so you can thread a ribbon through. (I forget this every year and have to fish the cookies out of the oven half way through!)
7. Bake until golden (time will depend on how big your cookies are, but check after 10 minutes). Hey presto the boiled sweet has melted to create your stained glass window.
8. When they come out of the oven check to see that the hole is still there (the cookies will spread a little while cooking) and make the holes a little bigger if you need to. You can sprinkle on some sugar while they’re still warm to give a frosty look if you want to. Leave the cookies to cool completely on the baking paper and then gently peel the paper off. Add a ribbon and hang them on the tree or in your window. They make lovely presents too – wrap in cellophane and tie with a ribbon. If you’re hanging them on your Christmas tree try and position them so a fairy light shines through the ‘glass’ – they’ll look beautiful and smell wonderful!
We’ve been making paper snowflakes today – which I’m sure you made when you were a child so you won’t need any instructions. But you might like to try these virtual snowflakes. We love them and even my 3 year old managed to make one with a little help with the mouse. But be warned – they’re rather addictive! You can use the ‘Find a Flake’ to see the one Nurturestore made.
