Animals in Winter Family Night

I was planning to do a week of hibernation for M, but decided to add migration and then other animals in winter than do neither.  When I found this book at the library, this week started coming together.

Dinner
I made baked potatoes for dinner and made M's look like a cave and bear to go along with the hibernation theme.  She loved eating her "chicken bear".

Craft
We designed and decorated our own bear cave out of an empty tissue box.  Daddy worked on covering the box with a brown paper bag while M colored a bear I had printed out and R ripped up tissue paper to use as bedding for the bear. 

Storytime We read Animals in Winter and How the Hibernators Came to Bethlehem.  The first book is an absolute gem.  It is non-fiction for preschoolers and really helped explain hibernation and migration in a simple way that M could understand.  I'm hoping to find some more books from this series in the future.

I'll be posting an Animals in Winter Preschool Pack tomorrow!

Week in a Glance - M is 33 Months Old, R is 12 Months Old

We started off the season of Advent by focusing on it's symbols and meanings this week.  Don't forget to take a look at our Advent Family Night and Advent Countdowns if you are looking for more Advent ideas!

M worked on her writing practice from her Advent Preschool Pack

Both kids spent a lot of time playing with the caps from some baby food squeeze pouches. 
R enjoyed putting them in an empty puffs container and pouring them back out again.

M organized them by color and then used them for pretend play, carrying them around in her feed sack (baby doll sling) and feeding them to her stuffed animals.

We had friends over for a messy playdate.  I taped some butcher paper to the table and laid out some markers, paint, stamps, cookie cutters, and dot markers and we let the kids go crazy making homemade wrapping paper.  The kids had a great time making messes and I even let R get in on the action (although I had to find something else for him to play with when he started eating the markers).

M watched The King is Born too many times to count this week.  She kept asking for "baby Jesus" and I would gladly turn it on for her.

Lots of developmental milestones this week as well.  R said his first word!  (It was "No"!).  M also started potty training herself this week!  Long story short, I discovered she had secretly been using the bathroom and disposing of it in the guest bathtub!  Really gross, but also really neat that she took the initiative on her own!

I didn't get any pictures of her working on her Advent Countdowns but she has been looking forward to them and asking for them every single morning when she wakes up.

That's all for this week!  Next week we'll be working on Animals in Winter.

We'll be linking up to Preschool Corner as well as Tot School.  Visit their websites to find some more great learning activities!

Friday Finds

I see so many cool things around the blogosphere these days that I really want to be able to share them.  Fridays will be my special day here to share some fun finds that I have found that week.  Enjoy!

 

These Letter to Santa Templates are absolutely adorable!  I always remember being a little bit intimidated at writing a letter to Santa all by myself, so these would have been perfect.

I'm really digging the fun Advent activity calenders I've been seeing.  Here's one that makes a new ornament each day, and one that reads a new Christmas book each day.

Make sure to check out these ideas for quick car games if you'll be spending any time traveling in a car with your toddler/preschooler this Christmas.  The link is just to the first one, so make sure to take a look at all 5 of the games she posted.

What were your favorite finds this week?

Advent Preschool Pack

It's a little late in the week to be posting this, but Advent lasts 3 more weeks so we'll be using these periodically whenever M starts begging for school (and trust me, she does!).  I absolutely adore 1+1+1=1's Nativity Pack, but alas, since I have no color printer, I had to make my own. Hers is far superior, but in case you are in the same colorless boat that I am, feel free to use mine.

Advent Preschool Skills Pack

Advent Countdowns

Here are some of the ways that we are counting down to Christmas this year.

Jesse Tree

A Jesse Tree is an interactive symbol of our countdown to the birth of Jesus.  Each day we read a scripture and put up a new ornament that symbolizes that scripture.  The scriptures start at creation and highlight each important section of the bible down to Jesus being born, and his attributes.  Ours is simply a cut-out of brown paper for the tree with a homemade library pocket full of these cute paper ornaments.  Every morning until Christmas, M will pull out that days ornament, tape it onto one of the tree's branches, and we will read that particular story from her toddler bible.

Journey to Bethlehem Advent Calender

I was trying to think of an interactive visual calender that would help M understand what this season of Advent is all about.  I thought what she would understand most would be Mary waiting for her baby to be born, so that's what I went with.  This is a little picture of Mary & Joseph placed on one end of a ribbon, with a picture of Bethlehem on the other end.  Every morning she will cut a little bit of the string and move Mary & Joseph closer to Bethlehem, which they will reach on Christmas Eve.

Candy Advent Calender

This was super simple and took only about an hour to make total.  I cut and assembled library pockets out of Christmas patterned paper, and strung them up on a ribbon as a garland.  After numbering each pocket I slipped a piece of candy inside each pocket.  After dinner every day, we'll share this piece of candy and count down to Christmas.

Manger Padding

Every time M does a good thing like sharing with her brother or obeying us, she can come get a piece of hay from the little jar and place it in the center of our Advent wreath.  By the time Christmas rolls around, hopefully we will have a nice full bed for Baby Jesus to sleep on!

Advent Family Night

We do Christmas a little bit differently in my family.  We are Catholic, and celebrate Advent for the four weeks prior to Christmas, then celebrate Christmas from Christmas Eve to Epiphany, the traditional 12 days of Christmas.  Advent is a time of waiting, a season similar to Lent in which we prepare ourselves for the birth of Jesus.  We used our family night this week to introduce M to the concept of Christmas, and what we are waiting to celebrate.

First off we made our own Advent wreath.

I also showed her our family Advent wreath, and taught her that we light one candle each week and that this weeks candle symbolizes hope.

We read a couple of nativity stories that we had checked out from the library.


We watched The King is Born, a great little video from a series that I had watched as a kid.  M loved it, and it was a perfect way to bring the nativity story to life for her.

After that we watched "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas" on TV before we got the kids ready for bed.  Hey, we're only human!  It's hard not to get caught up in the fun parts of the "traditional" Christmas season!

Tomorrow I'll post pictures of our Advent calendars, Jesse Tree, and Manger Padding; some other fun ways that we are helping M be involved in the process of preparing for Jesus.

Library Corner - Stories for Older Children (4 and up)

This is not our regularly scheduled Library Corner, but I have a list of books I'd like to share.  A couple of weeks ago I went through the online catalog and put about 30 Christmas books on hold for us.  I picked them up last night, and after glancing through them, these are the ones I'll be returning today.  I've read them all, and they are great, they are just a little too advanced or long to hold M & R's attentions.  I would say these would probably be great for about 4 and up.
Auntie Claus and the Key to Christmas by Elise Primavera - What a fun book!  Christopher Kringle, who lives with his parents, older sister and aunt in a posh New York suite, decides that he doesn't believe in Santa!  What a surprise when he is let in on a little family secret that will forever change his attitude about Christmas!

Christmas Day in the Morning by Pearl S. Buck - This book made me cry!  A wonderful story about a teenager, who realizing that his father loves him, wakes up early to milk the cows on Christmas morning so that his father won't have to.  I'm looking forward to checking out this book again once the kids are a bit older. 

Christmas City by Michael Garland - A fun look-and-find and puzzle book.  The storyline is fairly simple, but the puzzles were a little outside M's understanding, and we have plenty of Christmas books, so I thought I'd return it so that an older child could get more use out of it.

Christmas Stories for the Very Young by Edited by Sally Grindley - A compilation of six short Christmas stories.  The stories range in topics from a story about the sheep that were left behind all by themselves when the shepherds went to visit Baby Jesus to a story about a little girl whose only wish is to have snow for Christmas.  They were really cute, I just knew that they were a little bit long and little bit sparse in pictures for M's taste.

Farolitos of Christmas by Rudolfo Anaya - This book tells the story about how luminarias, a New Mexican Christmas tradition, were invented.  Might not be a particularly relevant book to many of you, but for those of us born and raised in the traditions and customs of New Mexico, it is nice to have a children's book that reflects the unique aspects of our culture.

The Santero's Miracle by Rudolfo Anaya - Another great New Mexican book by this wonderful author.  (Check out his adult books as well, they are wonderful New Mexican classics).  It is so nice to be able to read about Santos, bizcochitos, and the beautiful culture of Northern New Mexico in a children's book.

The Magic Maguey by Tony Johnston - A Mexican Christmas story about a plant called a Maguey that provides so many needs for the entire village.  When someone talks about cutting it down to build a house, a little boy finds a way to save it.  It was a cute story, but not really one that M would be able to identify with.

Week in a Glance - M is 32 Months Old, R is 12 Months Old

This will be a pretty laid back post since it was a pretty laid back week.  My hubby, who is a school teacher, had Wednesday through Friday off, so we spent quite a bit of family time together this week.  M worked on all the activities from her Thanksgiving Preschool pack, but I didn't get that many pictures.  The great thing about this week is that she got to work on them with her daddy.  We also had a super relaxing Thanksgiving with my dad and sisters (and their families), but again, no pictures.  Also a highlight of this week was R turning 1!  He is officially a tot!

M practicing cutting with her awesome new scissors

Thanksgiving Preschool Pack Activities

 Painting with Indian Corn

 The birthday boy!

 Making cookies with mama and daddy

Next week we'll be focusing on Advent activities!

We'll be linking up to Preschool Corner as well as Tot School.  Visit their websites to find some more great learning activities!