COUNTDOWN TO CHRISTMAS

I love the Christmas Season!  I really enjoy the traditions we have started with our kids! Here are a couple that we do each year and just started today, the first day of December.

I wrap 25 books and put them under our upstairs tree. Right before bed each night, the girls take turns opening up a book that we then read together snuggled in Punkin's bed. I always buy a brand new one that I make sure they save to open on Christmas Eve.

I used to do a separate Advent Calendar and Countdown Activity chart, but this year I combined them!  My Countdown to Christmas chart isn't as elaborate or decorative as some I've seen on Pinterest, but I didn't have time this year to go all out. :) At any rate, I printed out the advent Bible verse cards from HERE and then also wrote a fun Christmas related activity on the back of each one. Each day, the girls take turns taking the card out and we read the Bible verse together (and then later put it up on our red poster...so each day we will read all the ones we have up there, adding one each day as we go.  By Christmas, we will have verses that tell the whole Christmas story.) After that, we turn it over and find out what the fun Christmas activity is for that day.

Here are a list of the things we are doing this year:

1. Handprint Trees / Wreaths
2. Make a paper chain to decorate bedroom door.
3. Christmas Candlelight Picnic Dinner (on the floor by the tree)  
4. Hot Cocoa Bar
5. Play “I Spy” ornament Scavenger Hunt
6. Make Ornament cake balls
7. Go to Toys R Us to buy Toys for Tots gifts
8. Christmas Party at Aunt Rose and Uncle Bob’s house
9. Make “Peppermint Cocoa Floats” (peppermint ice cream and hot cocoa)
10. Write a Christmas Letter to Great Grandma and mail it
11. Festival of Lights in PJ’s with popcorn
12. Make Snowflakes and decorate with glitter
13. Make gift for SS teachers, preschool teachers, school teachers
14. Make a gingerbread house with a friend
15. Church program
16. School program
17. Make Christmas Cookies
18. Have a “snowball fight” with wadded paper
19. Deliver Christmas cookies to neighbors
20. Sleepover at Grandma's
21. Help me wrap gifts for cousins
22. Unwrap 1 stocking gift early
23. Camp out under Christmas Tree in sleeping bags
24. After Christmas Eve service, give a gift box to the kids full of new jammies, a Christmas video, and snacks. Watch the movie in new PJs with the snacks in mom and dad’s bed.
25. CHRISTMAS!

FALL TOT SCHOOL

Well, I am just not going to be able to post weekly anymore like I used to back in the day.  It may be more like "seasonally" ....  LOL. And our schedules have changed drastically since the day when it was just Punkin and Mommy.  We don't get to Tot School every day and only do it randomly as we can fit it in.  But Firecracker really does LOVE any activities that we have time to do, and is soaking it all in like a sponge!  I love seeing her so excited! Anyway, here is some of what we did this fall with Halloween and Thanksgiving.

Tot Trays

Pumpkin Noodle Pounding. She stuck the noodles in pre-existing holes and then used her hammer to pound them in the box. She loved opening the box at the end and finding all the noodles inside. 

Simple Halloween Peg game I got a few years ago at the Dollar Tree.

She used the plastic spiders and sorted them by color into the pumpkins, then we counted certain numbers of spiders into the pumpkins, and then I had her use tweezers to "tong" them into the pumpkins for fine motor practice.

Pumpkin Transfer using Tongs.

"Mr. Pumpkin Head"

Halloween Activities

Pumpkin / Ghost Bowling

Beginning Letter Sound Sort

Simple Halloween Picture Matching

Playing "Memory" with Halloween pictures

Sorting orange and black pom poms. 

(Excuse the no pants...we were potty training that day!)

Halloween Treats

Cool Whip and orange frosting "parfaits"

Halloween Parfaits

Vanilla Pudding, Oreos, and orange Sprinkles

Fall and Pumpkin Activities

Firecracker rolled the dice, counted the number of dots, and then used the tweezers to put an orange pom pom on the pumpkin that had that number on it.

Pumpkin Size Sorting

I hid the pumpkin numbers around the room for Firecracker to find and then when she found them all, she lined them up in number order.

Using dot markers to find all the P's.

Which then led to making pictures with the dot markers. :)

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Q-tip painting to make fall trees. 

(Punkin was home from school on the day we did this, so she got to make one as well.)

Fall Sensory Bin

Leaf Counting #1

She picked a number card from the pile and then counted out that many leaves onto her tree.

Leaf Counting #2

She counted the dots on each leaf and then found that number on her tree.

Beginning Sound Letter Sort with Leaves

Thanksgiving Activities

Corn Counting

(When I did this with Punkin we used candy corn, but I had run out this year, so we improvised and used Reeses Pieces.)

Capital / Lowercase T turkey sorting

Beginning Sound Letter Sort with Turkeys

Making Easy Pumpkin Muffins for Thanksgiving morning.

I used the recipe from HERE. However, we used yellow cake mix instead of the spiced cake mix....only because I didn't have the spiced cake mix on hand.