{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.

{25 Days of Christmas: Day 19}

Today's books were... Christmas in the Manger by Nola Buck and Who is Coming to Our House by Joseph Slate.

Our activities for the day were supposed to be either nativity blocks or a felt nativity set. Needless to say with how busy we've been traveling, etc. I didn't get either of those things made. Instead we decorated a foam Christmas tree that Christopher got at our playdate gift exchange from his buddy Owen. Since he loves "stickies" right now I knew this would be a perfect fill in.

He also got a paint set, foam number puzzle, mini felt Christmas tree and ornaments and finger puppets/ornaments to decorate. We've played with all of these things so far and he loves to tell me who each of the gifts are from!

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

{25 Days of Christmas: Day 18}

Our book for today was The Gingerbread Man by Catherine McCafferty.

Our activity for the day was to make Gingerbread playdough. Since this was Christopher's gift to all of his playdate buddies we had to do this Sunday evening so today we just played with some of the other activities we've done in the past few weeks. We also played with Christopher's gingerbread playdough which is the first playdough he's really gotten into, maybe because it smells so yummy?

Mixing it up!

Knead it and let it cool!

We packaged the dough in these cute containers from the Dollar Tree and included a 6 pack of Christmas cookie cutters, from the Dollar Tree, as well.

The playdough recipe can be found here.

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

{25 Days of Christmas: Day 17}

Today's book was Jingle Bells by Veronica Vasylenko.

Our activity for the day was to make jingle bell bracelets, although I think Christopher could have just played with the container of bells all day. I gave him some pipe cleaners and let him string on as many bells as he wanted to. It turned more into putting bells on the pipe cleaner and shaking it than making a bracelet but we all had fun!

Having fun making some noise

Our "bracelet" now decorating the kitchen cabinets

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

{25 Days of Christmas: Day 16}

Our books for the day were The Hat & The Mitten, both by Jan Brett.

Our activity for the day was matching felt mittens. I cut out twelve little mittens from felt, two of each color. When we got done reading the books I had Christopher match the mittens, although he just wanted to stick them to his felt tree, but that worked too.

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

{25 Days of Christmas: Day 15}

Our book for the day was That's Not My Snowman by Fiona Watt.

 Christopher loves, loves, loves all the books in the "That's Not My..." series. We have quite a few now thanks to yardsales and consignment shops and I was excited to find this one a few months ago at a yardsale. So far, just like the others, it's a hit!

Our activity for the day was to play with "snow" playdough (aka white playdough) and I gave him a snowman cookie cutter to explore with. He loved when Daddy came to help and they cut out seven snowman from his playdough!

A snowman!

Daddy is cutting out the snowman and I'm stacking them in my container.

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

{25 Days of Christmas: Day 14}

Our book for today was Let it Snow by Maryann Cocca-Leffler.

 I love all the illustrations in this story and the cute storyline, but be warned... you will be looking forward to snow after reading it :)

Our activity for the day was to make Christmas thank you cards. I loved this Christmas card that the Dubien family made and knew that since there was no way I could get Christopher (or Tim for that matter) to put their fingerprints on 75-80 cards, I would use it for our thank yous. Maybe when we are finished building our family and all our little blessings are older they will think this is fun to do as a Christmas card, they can also help me in convincing Daddy that it would be fun :)

Of course I had to decorate the envelopes too :)

Little reindeer

 I kept it simple and just did Christopher's thumbprint with brown ink. Then I added the antlers, eyes and nose with a marker instead of doing all the extras. I think they turned out adorable and am excited to send them out sometime soon!

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

{25 Days of Christmas: Day 13}

Our book for the day was How to Build a Snowman by Jo Moon.

Overall an adorable book, Christopher loved the textures and illustrations. He'll be all ready to build his first snowman when it snows!

Our activity for the day was to paint a snowman. I gave Christopher a piece of blue construction paper and white paint then let him go to town with a paintbrush. After his creation was done drying Mommy turned it into a snowman.

Christopher's favorite part was "snowman's hat."

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

{25 Days of Christmas: Day 12}

Today's book was Dream Snow by Eric Carle. 

Christopher's absolute favorite part of this book is at the end when you get to push a button which makes some lights sparkle and plays a soft tune. He did this over and over again and proceeded to do a little dance while it was playing. I'm thinking we may see this special dance several times over the next few days.

Our activity for the day was to do a snowflake rubbing. Since we did not have a large snowflake stencil, I drew a snowflake on a piece of paper and outlined all the lines with hot glue. When it was time to do the activity I put a blue piece of paper over the snowflake and Christopher colored it with a white crayon so the snowflake would show up.

It was hard to get the lines to show up and little man didn't have the strength to do it by himself so he just asked for Mommy's "help." I absolutely love when he says, "Mommy help," although at this stage we get a lot of screeching out of frustration too :)

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

{25 Days of Christmas: Day 11}

Our book for the day was If You Take a Mouse to the Movies by Laura Numeroff.

Absolutely love the "If You Give a ___ a ____" series. I was so excited when the Kohl's Care program had all the stuffed animals to go along with these books a few years ago and bought them all. Christopher's favorite (and of one his favorite "stuffies" of all time) is the cupcake cat, or as he calls it "Char Char."

Our activity for the day was simple and sweet, watch Merry Madagascar and wrap some presents. As we are in Baltimore still, and I was not bringing presents and wrapping paper along in our already stuffed car, we stuck to the Merry Madagascar plan. That was perfectly alright with this Mama as it means a nice break and who doesn't love Madagascar, ok I'm sure there are some weirdos, but what can you say for them :)

Enjoying the movie in my Merry Madagascar socks I got a few Christmas's ago

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

{25 Days of Christmas: Day 10}

Today's book was Llama Llama Holiday Drama by Anna Dewdney.

I got this book when it first came out because I loved the Llama Llama series, and so did my preschool class. Christopher loves reading the Lllama Llama board books that just came out but isn't into the older versions yet. I still thought I would give it a shot but he didn't recognize it as his precious "Llama Llama" yet, maybe next year :)

Our project for the day was Christmas action/movement cards created by Alison at Oopsey Daisy. You can download these adorable cards right from her page and then print them out! I laminated ours as little man is still into destroying things at random. He at least tried to do all of them but his favorites were chuckling like Santa (and if you've ever heard his chuckle you'll understand why) and twirling like a snowflake since for some reason he loves to spin in circles ridiculously fast and never seems to tire of it.

I'm sure we will use these for years to come and even in these next few winter months as we are trapped inside!

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

{25 Days of Christmas: Day 9}

Our book for the day was It's Christmas, David! by David Shannon.

We have a few of the David board books and though they've never been Christopher's favorite I thought this book would be great due to it's simplicity and that sometimes, David's silly antics remind me of Christopher.

Our activity for the day was to paint with cookie cutters. I got a pack of six cookie cutters at the Dollar Tree for, you guessed it, $1! I put the paint on a plate, showed Christopher what to do, and he went to town.

Having fun! His favorite cookie cutter was the "stockin."

He absolutely dislikes having anything on his hands. This was right after he got some paint on them.

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