Advent Chain

Here is our quick and easy Advent chain

I had C paint 4 pieces of construction paper which I cut into strips when they dried.

On each strip I wrote the date and a simple activity. Most are things we can do at home since we live in WI in the country. We never know when the weather will keep us home.  Some of the ideas I got from The Activity Mom's list, others are ideas from when I was a teacher or from ideas I have found online.

1. Make cookies with Grandma 

2. Ornament Shadow Match (I bought these ornaments at the Dollar Tree a few years ago)

3. Brown Reindeer, Brown Reindeer Book

4. Christmas Garland (I will post pictures when we make it, C made me a fall leaf garland and I loved it, so will do the same with winter and Christmas shapes)

5. Advent Wreath  but the wreath will be a handprint wreath

6. Counting Presents

7. Shop for Toys for Tots

8. Position word Tree

9. Tree and gift shape match

10. Handprint Santa

11. Santa Dice Game

12. Hand and footprint Angel

13. Bow and Gift color match

14. Christmas Tree Shapes 

15. Drive around to see lights (I plan to do this on the way to Awana, so we will be out and about anyway)

16. Fireplace and stocking ABC match

17. Hand and foot print reindeer

18. What is in the stocking game (I will put different toys in the stocking and C will feel and guess what is inside, without looking of course)

19. I can color Christmas book

20. Candy Cane pattern

21. Rudolph Rudolph Book

22. Make cookies with Mommy

23-25 - those are blank since we will be traveling for Christmas. Not exactly when or if we would get to activities :)

And here is the chain hanging up. When C saw it, she stood under it and said "I am at a party!"

(ignore the half painted doorway, we live in a "work in progress" home which hasn't been "worked" on much since we had children)

Sites with great Christmas activities

Little Giraffes

Activity Mom

Pre-K Pages

1+1+1=1 

Pre-Kinders

Shutterfly Christmas Card Promotion!

I have used Shutterfly for storing and printing photos for several years. In fact, looking back, the oldest folder in my account dates back to 2004! I have used them for printing many items, from our "Save the Dates" for our wedding, making a photo book of my trip to Washington DC a few years ago, to the precious photos of our two girls. I have always been happy with what arrives in the mailbox!

This year I plan on using Shutterfly to print our Christmas cards to send to friends and family! They have so many beautiful designs to choose from. Here are a few of my favorites. It will be a hard choice to make.

I may also order my parents a calendar featuring C and J! And later make a photo book of J's first year (and maybe one for C too!)

Now, all I have to do is get both girls to look at the camera...at the same time. Wish me luck! Go check out Shutterfly how bloggers can earn 50 free photo cards.

Disclosure: I will be receiving free photo cards from Shutterfly for this promotion. The above is my honest opinion!

What we have been doing..

I guess I haven't posted in awhile. Mostly because I just didn't take pictures of what we have been doing. That, and baby J hasn't been taking long afternoon naps lately.

I thought I would share some pictures of seasonal things I have out.

The felt turkey, the feather counting and color matching (made from paper) are leftover from my teaching days. 

(sorry about the dark pictures)

 Pumpkin toss - I made a stuffed pumpkin and C tossed it into a waste basket

 Felt board turkey

 Counting feathers

Matching feathers

This isn't Thanksgiving related, but I finally got around to making the button snake I have seen around blog land. I recently saw this post on Activity Mom using felt pieces shaped like leaves. I probably won't get around to making leaves, but I do plan on making felt trees for Christmas. 

 We made lots of hand print turkeys
(not sure why this one showed up sideways)

 Hand print candy corn

My version of the button turkey

(I am not much of a sewer, but he was pretty easy to make)

I have other ideas planned, hopefully I can get those pictures posted before Thanksgiving!

Tot School

This week's theme was the final week of our All About Me theme - "I can do it myself"

We worked on some self help skills - such as taking off and putting on her own clothes and helping with a few chores (putting away silverware and folding washcloths). We tried potty training, but she is not ready. I didn't take a lot of pictures this week.

I did get one picture of her "helping" me. She loves to put the silverware away. Although she takes forever and sometimes ends up playing with the already put away pieces.

After seeing this post at What I Live For I had to make my own Peek A Boo Blocks. I need a stronger glue for my curious girl (I used my hot glue gun) - she was able to take one apart. Luckily it was one that had a few blocks in it, not the one filled with popcorn! She had fun shaking and stacking them.

C's older cousin celebrated a birthday and she made him this card.  I gave her crayons that were the same colors as the foam stickers to decorate it first. The color matching was her idea :)

Tot School - Our House

This week our theme was "Our House"

The first thing I made was this matching game. I used a file folder and drew a house on the front with enough windows for us each (4 of us) to have 2 windows

I used an exacto knife and cut the windows and door so they can open.

On the inside of the folder I put our pictures - 2 of each.

I put our family picture behind the door just for fun.

C loved this matching game and had fun finding the matching pictures. I only taped the pictures so I could move them around if needed.

We counted the rooms in our house. I grabbed some pom poms and we went around the house and put one on the floor in each room. Then we took this bucket around and picked them all up. When we found them all we counted them to find out how many rooms we have in our house.

I had plans to count other items in the house, but we never got to it. Maybe we will do that this coming week.

Another use for those pom poms! C put the small ones through the holes in a Parmesan cheese container.

We received more stickers in the mail this week. I placed the large stickers on the paper and she found the matching small sticker.

I tried to get C to make any mark inside the empty circles of the sticker sheet (based on an idea from The Activity Mom) but C wasn't interested and wanted me to do it. She kept saying "you do it Mama"

She helped me in the kitchen again, she whisked ingredients for this recipe of egg stuffed tomatoes ("Miss Picky" even tried it, but did not like it)

She also "helped" me make these Oatmeal Waffles.