ABC Christmas Countdown




Merry Christmas!!

I was trying to figure out a fun way to countdown to Christmas this year and suddenly realized that the ABC's were a perfect way to do it! I wanted to post about this a few days early so if anyone else wants to join in you'd have time to get stuff ready.

Here is the idea:
1. We will decorate a letter each day with a Christmas word that goes with that letter.
2. We will do a fun activity that is associated with that Christmas word.


To Do:

1. Cut out, draw, or buy letters in uppercase or lowercase. (I used red punch-out letters that I got at the dollar store a while ago.)

2. Glue or tape each of the letters on a piece of paper. (I used 4x6 card-stock. As we decorate each letter, I'm going to put them in a 4x6 photo album so we have an ABC Christmas book!)

3. Using colored paper, cut out pictures for each letter that your child can put together. (I used construction paper and paint samples because they are really vibrant colors.) For example, G is for Gingerbread (shown in picture above.) I cut out a gingerbread man and some things to put on him. LM will simply put the gingerbread man together and then glue him on the G! It definitely will save time and energy having these all ready to go!

4. Put each letter and it's picture pieces in a ziploc baggie. Organization = success! :)

5. Find a special place to put the letter for each day. I'm going to use the silver Christmas tin shown in the picture above. Each day LM will look in the tin and find the baggie with the letter for that day. You could also hide the baggie with the letter somewhere in your house and have your child hunt for it!

6. If you want, you can also do an activity associated with that Christmas word. We are going to have a variety of crafts, learning activities, games, and just fun stuff. All of which will be pretty simple.


Here is our list of Christmas ABC's. Feel free to change any words you'd like to use.
Check back as we countdown to see what activities we do with each word.

ABC's of Christmas:
A - Angel 
B - Bells
C - Candy Canes
D - Drums
E - Elf
F - Family
G - Gingerbread
H - Holly
I - Ice Skates
J - Jesus
K - Kindness
L - Lights
M - Mittens
N - Nativity
O - Ornament
P - Presents
Q - Quilt
R - Reindeer
S - Snowman
T - Tree
U - Unwrapping
V - Village
W - Winter
X - Xylophone
Y - Yummy
Z - Zzzzzzz.....

And since there are 25 days to Christmas and 26 letters in the Alphabet, you could either do 2 letters on one of the days, or start a day early, or do the day after Christmas too. Either way, it will be a fun way to celebrate and learn each day until Christmas.

Last of the Leaves

Fall has lasted far longer than we are used to. It's been wonderful! But sadly, the cold weather is coming and the last of the leaves are finding their way to the ground. Here are a few more fall crafts as we wave goodbye to an awesome autumn.

Both are colorful trees. The first is made from real leaves, and second from paint.


Paper Plate Pumpkin Pie





This is a fun craft we made at Library storytime last week: a paper plate pumpkin pie! They had paper plates cut into quarters, let the kids glue on some construction paper "crust", sprinkled some pumpkin spice on some glue to give it a yummy smell, and a dollop of cotton-ball "cream" on top! Almost good enough to eat!

Re-Post: A Sweet way to say Thanks!



Here is a sweet way to write a Thank You Note: Bake cupcakes! 

We wrote "Thanks" on them using the ziploc baggie trick:  put frosting in a ziploc baggie and cut off one of the corners so you have a small hole. Then write your message! We also used another baggie to place some yellow polka-dots on top.




Leaf Crispies

Last year we made rice crispies and cut them out using some leaf cookie-cutters. Then we decorated them with fall-colored frosting and took them to people we are thankful for.




Happy Thanksgiving!

Gratitude Turkey Tradition




This is something we did last year (2009). The idea, however originated years ago with some of my college room mates. I wish I had the picture of our college turkey, because it was HUGE and amazing and filled up an entire wall!

The idea is to cut out a Turkey body, (I used a brown paper bag stuffed with newspapers for our Turkey body) and stick it up on the wall with tape or sticky tack:


And then cut out a bunch of feathers using construction paper:

Anytime someone thinks of something they are grateful for, they pick out a feather and write it on there. Then they add the feather to the wall around the turkey with tape or sticky tack. (We put ours on the side of our file-cabinet--hence the black background).



After a month of gratitude, our turkey turned out to be quite a thankful fat-feathered-fowl indeed!

Leaf Turkey





To make this fun turkey to make! We cut out a turkey body with construction paper, and used silk leaves we had left over from a Halloween party for the feathers! You could also gather up some real fall leaves for the turkey feathers!

Happy Thanksgiving!

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