Monday, January 14, 2013

{25 Days of Christmas: Day 25} Merry Christmas!

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU AND YOUR FAMILY, PRAYING YOU ALL HAVE A WONDERFUL DAY!

Here are a few pictures from our day:

This is where Santa's cookies and milk were last night. He left felt counting cookies, a letter and the last book in our countdown... A Christmas Prayer by Amy Parker
Can I eat these?
Helping Daddy open his gifts
It's a rough life...
Playing with my new cutting food! I also got Zoo Talkers, Puppets, Dinosaurs and a Felt sandwich set.
A play kitchen!!!
Playing in the snow while Daddy shovels!
We had a great Christmas!! Christopher woke up and where Santa's cookies had been he found felt counting cookies made by the elves (aka Mommy), a letter from Santa and the last book in our countdown. We had some cinnamon buns, opened presents and even got time to play in the snow before heading to Tim's parent's house to celebrate.

The felt cookies were an idea found at Counting Coconuts. I pinned them awhile ago and thought it would be a cute Christmas surprise.

If you had fun reading along it's never too early to start stocking up on books for next year, look at yardsales, consignment shops, ask for them as gifts, go to book sales, borrow from libraries and exchange some with your friends!

{25 Days of Christmas: Day 24}

IT'S CHRISTMAS EVE!!! (Just in case you haven't figured that out)

Today's book was Little Critter's the Night Before Christmas by Mercer Mayer.


Our poor little guy hasn't been feeling well the past few days so today we're just sticking to opening our stockings (one of our Christmas traditions), watching Prep & Landing  (which is in Christopher's stocking), putting out cookies/milk/carrots for Santa and the reindeer and watching our personalized video from Santa!!

If you want to personalize a video go to Portable North Pole. You can type in lots of information and even include a picture. At the end you'll get a free personalized video from Santa to your child(ren). It's a lot of fun and Christopher loved when Santa was talking to him!

Opening my stocking!
Watching Santa in his sleigh!
Our letter, cookies, milk and reindeer for Santa and his reindeer.
The letter from Santa was from Blush Printables. We used her letterhead, without text, when we wrote our letter to Santa too!

In case you are just joining us, here is the post with all the Christmas books.

{25 Days of Christmas: Day 23}

Our book for the day was The Night Before the Night Before Christmas by Natasha Wing.

 
I love the "The Night Before..." series by Natasha Wing and there is one for just about every occasion (Father's Day, 100th Day of School, St. Patrick's Day, Thanksgiving, First Grade, Valentine's Day etc.). If you've never read one, check them out!

Today for our activity we did a simple outline match. I took the cookie cutters that we used for our painting activity and traced them on a piece of construction paper. Christopher had to match the cookie cutter with the outline. Of course, he picked up the snowman one right away, little man seems to be obsessed with snowman lately!


In case you are just joining us, here is the post with all the Christmas books.

{25 Days of Christmas: Day 22}

Today's book was Bear Stays Up for Christmas by Karma Wilson.



Since today is a family dinner with Tim's side of the family we are taking it easy so our activity was simply to read The Cheerios Christmas Play Book and use Cheerios to play along.

Daddy and I counting out the Cherrios
My favorite part... eating them!!
We also just sat and read lots of the books we've already opened and some that were in a basket but weren't part of the countdown.

In case you are just joining us, here is the post with all the Christmas books.

{25 Days of Christmas: Day 21}

Today's book was One Shining Star: A Christmas Countdown Book by Anne Vitur Kennedy.


Our activity was to cut out a big yellow star and put star stickers all over it. After it was done we put it on top of Christopher's small tree we got him last year during Christmas clearance.

The other side was much more loaded down with stickers. Once Christopher gets a hold of "stickies" he never wants to stop!


We also talked about all different shapes and read the shape book that I made for my class while teaching. It basically just has lots of different shapes (even parallelograms!) in different colors. For some reason he loves looking through that book and can identify a star, heart, circle, triangle, oval, diamond and square. He also says, "gon," but uses that for the pentagon, hexagon, etc. What can I say the boy loves shapes!

Another fun activity, which we did not do, would be to take a simple shape scavenger hunt around your house and identify what the shape of certain items are!

In case you are just joining us, here is the post with all the Christmas books.

{25 Days of Christmas: Day 20}

Our book for the day was Merry Christmas, Big Hungry Bear! by Don and Audrey Wood. 


When I was younger one of my favorite books was The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry and the Big Hungry Bear and I can remember our parent's reading it to us over and over again. I saw they had come out with a Christmas version and knew I wanted to add it to our collection. It is just as cute as the original and Christopher and I both enjoyed reading it!

Our activity for the day was to make a bow wreath and paint with bows. First up was the bow wreath. Before we did this activity I took a paper plate and cut the middle out. I then brought up a bag full of bows and let Christopher pick out a few (I think picking them out was one of his favorite parts!). Take off the back stick them to the plate and voila... a bow wreath! If you want to display somewhere around the house just punch a hole in the plate and use a ribbon or yarn to hang.



Next up was painting with a bow. To say our son doesn't like to get his fingers messy is the understatement of the world right now. Anytime he gets anything on them he wants it wiped off, immediately. To try and avoid paint all over his hands, which would lead to him not wanting to do anymore, I got a clothespin and put the bow on the end so his little fingers would be further away from the paint. Overall he had a great time, but did manage to get some paint on his fingers. No worries, he just had Daddy take over and told him which color he wanted him to paint with.


Telling Daddy, "Red," or "Green"
The finished product

Both of these projects were simple and we already had the supplies here, which is always a plus! I had done these both while teaching preschool but got the idea to put the bow on the painting for display from Share and Remember.

In case you are just joining us, here is the post with all the Christmas books.