My December 22nd school was done for myself and Kaitlyn and we were in full fledged Family Christmas mode. We had been doing Christmas things for a while but the load of work off my mind suddenly made everything much more fun! Our book for the 22nd was The Toys Night Before Christmas.
This version of the night before Christmas is not written in the familiar verse but instead tells of that special night from the point of view of the toys. Jack (in-the-box) brings up how he feels it is not fair that everyone gets Christmas presents except them, because they are toys. The other toys aren’t bothered but Jack makes it his mission to bring presents to all the toys on Christmas. He goes all out becoming his own version of Santa complete with presents, a sleigh, and reindeer – well he uses birds instead. All goes well until he gets stuck in the chimney. One cute feature of the book are the signs of the real Santa Claus on each page. A very cute tale that will really echo with the ‘Toy Story’ generation of kids.
Christmas was really close and I wanted to give the girls a chance to make their own wrapping paper to go with their gift tags we made on the 20th. I was unsure that type of paper to use but found newsprint really cheap at Staples and thought it would work perfect. Wether working with markers, paints or other materials this is definitely an activity where you want to put a drop sheet down. The first type we tried were with our Christmas stencils.
I picked these when I hosted an Usborne book party a number of years ago and the girls love them! They are great for working on pencil control with Eileen and Kaitlyn loves using them for an outline and then she adds her own patterns and colours. I would love to try and find some other cards with different themes.
Next I pulled out the tempura paints and my cookie cutters. It works well to pour some of the paint in to pie plates. This makes it easier to dip the cookie cutters in the paint and then stamp them on their paper. To make things easier I picked one colour for each cookie cutter – this kept things a bit neater and limited colour mixing. When we got close to being done I let Kaitlyn mix a few to see what colours she could come up with.
Each girl made a few sheets, enough to wrap their presents for each other, for Michael and for Daddy. I thought the paper may be to big while we were making them but we used it all when wrapping. Next year I may do a few smaller sheets also for those smaller presents.
Mommy's Lessons 