Christmas Activities

My sweet girls have been enjoying this time of year so much. They love looking at all the pretty lights, admiring our tree(s), and have been reading and re-reading all of our Christmas books. We've also been enjoying different Christmas activities at home.

I set up a small sensory tub for the girls. I found a small tree at Hobby Lobby for around $5 and placed it in the tub surrounded by snow (cotton balls). I also added

• Small ornaments for the girls to decorate and re-decorate the tree 
• Red bells  
• Cinnamon sticks---I really want them to associate the wonderful scents that are all around us this time of year
•  A small nativity set for them to dig out and add to the small wooden (empty) manger I found in the Target dollar section
•  Small trees and lights found in the dollhouse section 
•  A small heart shaped box and I hide baby Jesus and we like to try and find Him. Finley has really enjoyed finding baby Jesus, she likes to hide Him around the house even and find Him.

I also created this little Christmas themed play dough set. I filled this cute little gingerbread house box with red and white play dough, small Christmas cookie cutters, red and green plastic jewels, and a small rolling pin. A big hit!

I saw the idea of a felt Christmas tree on pinterest and knew I had to recreate it. So I did...and let me tell you, GREAT IDEA! So simple. I just cut out a tree and some circles from felt and watch as both girls have a ton of fun!

We also made some candy canes. I added peppermint extract to red paint so they could enjoy that wonderful scent. Found that idea here. The whole house smelled so good! We briefly talked about the legend of the candy cane and took a few licks out of a real one. I printed out a candy cane shape and placed tape to make the stripes for Finley to paint. I gave the same print out to Rowynn and she really enjoyed painting it! I also cut out a candy cane out of red paper and added glue stripes and let Rowynn place cotton balls on it. She was more interested in eating it, but she finally got the hang of it.

I got this from this blog. It's part of a whole pack of printables, and they are all free. She always does great printables for you to use. The first couple of times Finley just drew all over the page protector, but with a little practice she started doing really well. This picture shows how much better she's doing at tracing.



This is from that same printable pack. This was a big hit! There was a cube that Finley would throw and we'd see what picture it landed on and then chart it. We'll probably keep adding to it.

Here is a baby Jesus craft we made. Finley drew the little face, she loves drawing faces!

There's so much fun stuff to do this time of year!!!