{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.