It has started again, for the 3rd year! Our 24 books of Christmas Countdown. This year I am really trying to keep it simple as my kids already have a pretty hectic life. I considered not doing it this year but they love it so much and started asking about it mid November. I have compiled the list, collected most materials and we hit the ground running today.
As always our first book was “The Elf on the Shelf”. You can check out what we did in 2011 and 2012, but we have to do this book the first of December every year as our elf Frankie comes back to visit. My girls in particular have been very much looking forward to his return. Kaitlyn was even invited to have a sleep-over at a friend’s last night but came home before sleep time because she wanted to wake up here in the morning to see Frankie. In our house it is almost the excitement of Christmas morning.
To keep it ‘kid friendly’ and in the spirit of ELK Kindergarten I invited the kids to work together to make a house for Frankie. I showed them a picture of an idea on spoonful.com and told them they could use whatever they wanted to make Frankie’s house. I had been saving the boxes from all our winter boots so they picked their favourite and from there I let them use anything they could find in our craft centre and introduced them to the Christmas craft bin where I had put a collection of random Christmas craft supplies.
The most amazing part was how well they worked together. For almost 1 hour my three children (aged 3, 5, and 7) work quietly together to build this house. No one yelled, no one told someone they were doing it wrong, they were even complimenting each other – it was pretty amazing. I gave no guidance and the only thing they asked me to do was glue the boxes together at the end.
Their finished project:
Mommy's Lessons 