Christmas Work Sheets

I know its a bit late however I really wanted to share these fab worksheets that I found over on one of my favourite blogs Confessions of a Homeschooler. Erica has some great ideas and an amazing printable pre-school curriculum which we will be doing bits & pieces from in the new year.

I admire people who choose to home school their children, as I know that I would lack the patience among many other skills that would be required. I'm also not sure that my boys would take to it very well, especially Joseph (4) as he tends to work better with his teachers than he does at home. So even though both boys attend both Nursery & Pre-School once I decided that it would benefit both boys to have some structured activity's when at home, geared towards learning.

As Josephs concentration has improved a bit recently I decided to re-try him on some work books that we got from some pre-school magazines. He really likes the stickers & engages with the well known characters. I do struggle with encouraging him to try the writing (tracing over the dotted lines etc) & often get "Mummy do it".

In the new year we are going to start with a letter of the week/fortnight using the Confessions of a Homeschooler printables, As a start I  printed off some sheets from Erica's Christmas Packs for the boys to use in the lead up to Christmas.

 

We started off with her Do-A-Dot pages, Erica uses Do-A-Dot markers which can be bought from Amazon US & also Amazon UK, however they work out pricey over here. So you can also use bingo markers or we used our ELC Easy Painters.

Once again Daniel (2.5) took to this activity better than Joseph, being more calm & precise, where as Joseph started off colouring with his & when asked to do one dot at a time started wildly stamping & drowning the page! 

Next we had our first go at cutting practise. Joseph has used scissors at home before but not often as Daniel would want to join in & he was previously to young. He does however use them lots at pre-school & his art work often is embellished with cuts or cut in half. With Daniel joining him at pre-school in the new year, I figured now was time to trust him with some scissors!

Daniels hands are quite small (as are his feet) for his age & he struggled to open the scissors but he had lots of fun, just needed help from me. 

I picked up our safety scissors in the Disney Store sale a couple of years ago for 10p each, and they have a cute Winnie The Pooh cap.

Cutting is obviously Josephs forte, as he managed the curve with out to much trouble & even went back over to neaten it up. He also managed the zig zag well but struggled more with the last line.

 

Both boys enjoyed Erica's work sheets & I look forward to doing more with them in the new year.

x Jo x

Saltdough Decorations

We decided to have another go at some salt dough after we first tried it for some Halloween bat decorations. So I bought some Christmas cookie cutters, as our current ones we use for play dough were a bit small. We made Christmas Trees, Snowmen & Gingerbread Men. We used this recipe from The Imagination Tree, but I have also got this microwave recipe pinned for future use.

 When making our bat decorations we found that salt dough sticks more than play dough, so we rolled out on banking paper to make it easier to lift the shapes off (lots of flour also helps). Before baking i used a drinking straw to make holes at the top of each one.

 

Then we painted them, we started off using some new glitter paints I'd bought but they were a bit transparent so I ended up adding some of our usual water based paint to the glitter paint, which worked quite well. As with most craft activity's Joseph (4) lost interest after a couple, but Daniel (2.5) would have sat there painting for ages, he is also a lot cleaner & more careful!

 The tree with the cut out in the centre wasn't very strong as the 2 that we made both broke :-(

 

I placed them on plastic to dry as previous crafts have been ruined by bits of newspaper stuck to them! We let them dry for an hour or so then painted the backs. 

The next day we added sequins & other bits we found, and also eyes for the snowmen & gingerbread man.  I then threaded ribbon through the top so that they can be hung up. I used a permanent marker to write on the back of some to use as teacher gifts & for the grandparents.

x Jo x

Christmas Fun Bath

After being inspired by the Christmas week over on Bath Activities For Kids, I decided to have ago at our first fun bath. I bought a large (a3) sheet of green craft foam from a local stationary shop  & then used some other bits I already had. I managed to cut both trees from the large sheet. I also had some plastic silver spots that I picked up from the Children's Scrapstore a while ago, its a great charity that provides a wide selection of items to groups that can be recycled to use for crafting & occasionally offer outreach programs to the public.

 

 I found the cute Christmas ducks 4 for £1 in a charity shop.

I also used green food colouring in the water, this is the effect a whole bottle had! I wish I had chosen the red as at least that wouldn't have looked like wee! As other bloggers have reported it didn't stain the kids, the bath or the tiles, however our clear bath mats are now a funny shade of pale green! Please use food colouring with caution.

 

I set the bath up for the boys Daddy was supposed to be distracting them downstairs but that didn't last long! By the time I had finished they were so excited & were banging on the door to see. 

 They had lots of fun in the bath, decorating the trees, the presents, seeing if it would stick to them.

 

Using a tree as a surf board for a duck!

This as the final display, including a robot :-) It was a huge success I expect we will repeat it several times in the lead up to Christmas & will be trying out some other bath ideas in the new year.

x Jo x

Simple Santa Hats

While tea was cooking the other day I decided to do a quick Christmas craft with the boys. I quickly grabbed some cotton wool balls from the bathroom & some thick red paper. I managed to cut 2 hats from an A3 sized sheet.

We used glue sticks to glue on our cotton wool (I find that prit sticks are the best & worth the extra money).

We then thought that they needed jazzing up a bit so I had a rummage & found some metallic confetti, the kind you can put in cards or one tables etc. We used snowflakes & red stars.

This was a nice little craft that was quick with out too much mess, just right to pass the 15 mins or so before tea was ready, & they are now up decorating our art wall.

x Jo x

Festive Sewing ...

As things are starting to feel a bit festive around here, I thought I would share some of my Christmas makes. I love sewing dresses more than any of my other makes, possibly as having 2 boys, it means that I get to make something pretty!

I'm really pleased with this pinafore dress is 100% cotton flannel, I love how the print is festive but not so much that it cant be worn after Christmas. It also has cute heart shaped buttons, that I found in my local haberdashery shop.

Pinafore dress - Age 1-2

I found these super cute Riley Blake Christmas squares at Prints To Polka Dots, one of my favourite online fabric shops. It was great that I could order 1 or 2 squares of each rather than having to buy a whole charm pack. They also sell all there fabric by the 'fat quater' which is great for small projects.

Patchwork Christmas T-Shirt - 9-12 mths

As well as using my machine I also enjoy hand applique, He was made using felt with a fleece scarf. I imported the carrot button from China, which I think finishes him off nicely.

Snowman Applique T-Shirt - 6-9 mths

 I also make a lot of bandanna dribble bibs which were one of my first sewing projects, since getting my own machine. I used these bibs all the time when Daniel was little as he was a real dribbler & always had wet t-shirts until I discovered these bibs. 

Festive Dribble Bibs - One Size

At time of writing all the above items are available for sale via my Facebook page, my ready made clothing & accessories can be found HERE & ready made bandanna bibs can be found HERE

x  Jo x

Its Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

I don't like to start any Christmas activity's etc with the boys until the 1st of December, as if we start any earlier we are board of Christmas before it gets here! Having said that I like to get the majority of my present shopping done before December! So the boys wrote their letters to Santa a couple of weeks ago to give him time to make & wrap their presents :-)

We sent our letters to Royal Mail who provide a free reply service for Santa to use, unlike many company's charging over £5! Santa will also be sending the boys an e-mail video message via the Portable North Pole (also free) in the next few days which proved a big hit last year.

The boys advent gifts, inc Xmas t-shirts & PJ's.

In the last few years we have accumulated a whole box of "Xmas Kids Stuff" toys,  books, DVDs etc. After seeing several different advent ideas on Pintrest I decided rather than letting the boys loose with a whole box of books & toys at the beginning of December I would space it out and wrap 1 or 2 items for each day which they could take turns in opening after breakfast. As I sat down to wrap everything I realised that I would need to carefully plan what would be opened on each day as a book for bedtime would be more useful on a day that the boys were at nursery all day than a colouring book!

 

So the boys got to open the first present which was a chalk count down to Christmas sign, along with the standard chocolate advent calender. We started on our salt dough decorations which i will put in another post when they are done. After lunch we went to a local Christmas Market & party, where we got to watch a magic show, meet some owls, go on a bouncy castle & listen to Santa read a story. We managed to win a giant Rodolph & a large jar of sweets! A bit gutted we didn't win the mini ipad, but oh well...

On Sunday the boys opened the second advent present which was a book called Shhh! By Julie Sykes & a Christmas Carols For Children CD. They both enjoyed the book which we read again at bed time & they listened to the 1st couple of songs, but mummy wasn't allowed to sing! They lost some interest in the music after that but it made a nice background while they played with Rodolph!

Here are some links to some of the books & DVDs the boys will be receiving:

UK Shhh!, Morris's Disappearing Bag (my copy I loved as a child), The Mr. Men Save Christmas, Woodland Tales: Wake Up Little Rabbit, Little penguin's good idea, LazyTown - Surprise Santa & Other Stories [DVD], Rugrats Christmas [DVD], The Wiggles - Santa's Rockin' [DVD]

x Jo x

Tube Slide

I had a spare cardboard wrapping paper tube to hand (yes I have been wrapping already) & was wondering what it could be used for that wouldn't become a sward or hitting device! With 2 boys this is often the case, even though I have so far avoided buying anything sward or gun related, Joseph (4) has made a gun out of Duplo & started pointing it & shouting "kill kill kill"

Anyway... Daniel (2.5) is a fan of making slides from things either for himself or toys. He even quite often will stand his spoon against his breakfast bowl & say "made slide mummy". 

So I made him a slide for his toys by cutting up each side of a wrapping paper tube, then stapled them together to make it a double slide. I then attached it onto a table with some sticky tape - don't do this on your best table!

We found some figures (Duplo but others would work just as well), bob the builder & a fireman had lots of fun on the slide. I did try suggesting to Daniel that some small cars could use the slide but apparently it was a silly idea!

Daniel played with this for nearly 30 mins & then re-visited on and off throughout the afternoon, until Joseph came back from pre-school pulled it off & started to use it as a sward!

If you fancy making a ball run with your wrapping paper tubes take a look here a happy wanderer & if you cant resist making a sward take a look here ikat bag.

x Jo x