Book Review – A Christmas Prayer, by Amy Parker

I LOVE this book, and plan on giving it to my 2 year old niece this Christmas.  It is simple, written in rhyme (rhyme that really works, if you know what I mean), and gently brings home the true meaning of Christmas.
The child in the illustrations thanks God for all the aspects of the Christmas story: the angels, the shepherds, the star, Mary, Joseph, Baby Jesus, and others.  It’s very well done and even brought a lump to my throat as I read it through the first time.

The illustrations are by Marljan Ramljak.  They are soft and pretty to look at.  I found them relaxing, albeit occasionally a bit too cutesy for my taste. 

This is a refreshing book for Christmas time – it helps offset the commercialism and materialism of the season. 
From the Thomas Nelson website:

Snuggle in this holiday season and offer up A Christmas Prayer.
In the tradition of A Night Night Prayer, this precious little child wanders through the house on a snowy Christmas night offering a prayer of thanks and blessing. The child finishes with thanks to God for the greatest Gift of all.
Noting all the characters in the Nativity, this lovable little nighttime prayer book has interactive dialogue and soothing rhyme for a child to repeat as they look around their world at Christmastime.
Between the soft Christmas glow of the illustrations and the smooth rhythm of the child’s prayer, A Christmas Prayer will make every parent and child want to snuggle up by the tree and offer a prayer of thanks to God for His many Christmas blessings.

Reading this book at Christmas will quickly become a tradition in our home, and I hope in yours too!

Thank you to Thomas Nelson Publishers for providing me with a complimentary copy of this book to review.

Tot School – Dec. 27, 2009

M is 40 months old

Tot School was pretty much non-existent this past week, but we managed to get a few things in…
Snowflake matching:
I printed the snowflakes from here, cut them into cards and M tried matching them up in our pocket chart. He did pretty well with this considering some of them were pretty tricky.
No picture for this one, but I printed some snowman grid gameboards from here, and we took turns rolling a die, then putting that number of cotton balls on our game cards. We went top to bottom and left to right. Whoever filled their card first won.
M’s cousin S came over for the day on Tuesday and we made homemade playdough. I didn’t add any coloring (it was a little off-white due to the brownish vanilla I put in it), but we did add silver glitter and vanilla extract. Yum! And pretty! I set out a tray of goodies: There’s buttons, googley eyes, ribbons, pipecleaners, and various lids here.
And the kids had a great time making snowmen:
Aren’t they adorable? And if you’re wondering which child used the pipecleaners for super-long noses… well, that would be my child, hee hee. ;)
We also used up our green playdough that was getting a little old. We used cookie cutters, glass pebbles, colored pasta, buttons, and glitter glue to decorate them. M gave these to grandparents and godparents for Christmas.
On Christmas Eve we had about 8 inches of snow dumped on us. I grabbed a couple of buckets and M played (well over an hour) with real snow and his little cars on the kitchen floor.I’ve noticed that if I occupy him with this kind of thing, he is quite happy to play on his own as long as I’m sitting at the table, cooking, or just hanging out in the kitchen. We explored how snow melted into water and then we set it back outside. Saturday morning he remembered it and we brought it in and he played with the ice!
I hope you are all having a Merry Christmas (remember, Christmas has just begun - it lasts for 12 days!!!). :)
For more tot school, go here!

Tot School, Christmas-style – Dec. 20, 2009

**M is 39 Months Old**

This post will be some of the Christmas-themed activities we’ve done in the past couple of weeks. We’ve had a productive, relaxed, insightful, and just plain fun time on my “blog-break” (more about that in future posts).

First, this is how I’ve been finding M first thing many mornings:(sorry for the blurry photo… these old hands of mine aren’t very steady before my coffee, heh) – he’s been sitting in front of the tree, all lit up in the dark, playing with toys so sweetly and quietly. I think he is really soaking up the magic of Christmas and those Christmas lights – remember how special they were when we were children? :) I’m loving this stage with him.

Music:
We have been singing and making music quite often now that his instruments and song book are out and accessible all the time: (Don’t let the blank look on his face fool you, he really does LOVE doing this!)

Fine Motor Skills:
This was a great post from Allie at No Time for Flashcards. However, I really didn’t feel like making one on my own so I gave M some yarn (instead of wire) and some felt I had cut into squares and cut a slit into the middle of – M strung the felt pieces onto the yarn, then we formed it into a wreath and hung it on the tree:
I made these fun rubbing plates using cardboard from a cereal box:I used a cookie cutter to trace the tree, star, and angel and free-hand drew the snowflake. Then I went over the drawings with hot glue. M used them with newsprint and crayons: This was a little tough for him because the paper slid around quite a bit. Here are the best samples of what he did: I plan to make more of these for other holidays – they were fun and really held his interest. He must’ve done dozens of these in the past two weeks.

Sensory:
I filled a large pan with “pretend snow” (shaving cream) one day and M played in it with his little cars for TWO HOURS. I am not kidding. TWO HOURS. There was a mess to clean up, which took me a good 15 minutes. But it was worth it for TWO HOURS of him being involved and interested in something. :)He asked for it again another day and played with it for 20 minutes, sigh. (ugh, look at that kitchen floor. So old and ugly. If anyone wants to give me a Christmas present, a new kitchen floor would be perfect. :) )

Math Skills:
M has really taken off with his understanding of patterns recently. He is really getting it. We did our pattern Christmas lights again, this time in an ABCABC pattern. At first he insisted that it could only be red, green, red, green, etc. Then I talked to him about how we sometimes play games with Daddy and we each take a turn, even though there are three of us. We ended up naming the green lights M, the red lights Daddy, and the blue lights Mommy, then strung them up – he really got it! At the end we were calling them by their colors again and he understood perfectly. We even did some AABB patterning and he picked up on that too! Yay!!

We did a quick counting game with some cardstock Christmas trees and pom poms. I drew little spots for 30 pom poms to go on each tree, then we simply took turn rolling the number cube and putting that many pom pom “ornaments” on our trees to decorate them. The first one to have all the spaces filled won.
I found some Christmas pattern mats here, and printed them in black and white. M was really into this, so I went back and printed a lot of the non-Christmas ones from the same site. The fact that they were black and white instead of colored like the ones we normally use provided just the right amount of challenge to M to make it interesting. He enjoyed “coloring” them with the pattern blocks.

Literacy:
M practiced spelling his name with this ornament stringing activity I made for him. You can read more about that here.
Religion:
We’ve really been enjoying our Jesse Tree stories every evening. I switched to a green felt Christmas tree to see if M would actually hang the ornaments on the tree. He has put some on the tree, but some are still in the “air” too. Such a silly boy sometimes. :) He has really learned a lot from this project, and is always so excited when it is Jesse Tree time!

Nature Center Time:
We are enjoying our Nature Center classes so much, and they just keep getting better and better. I’ve decided to start adding these into our Tot School posts so we’ll be able to remember how much fun we’ve had!

A couple of weeks ago we talked about what animals do when it snows. Did you know weasels turn white (except for the tips of their tails, which turn black) in winter? Or that frogs dig down deep into the mud and turn into frog ice cubes? :) The kids had a snowball fight inside with cotton balls, made candy cane animals,

(It’s a reindeer!)

and went ice-skating on wax paper:M had a ball. We are out of wax paper or we’d be doing this every day. I even tried it and it was fun for me too!

The next week “Nature Santa” visited and read a story about Christmas trees in the forest to the kids:
His glasses were fogged up here because he had just come in from a zero degree day.

M got to make bird feeders with bagels and seeds, and one with fruit loops on a pipecleaner: These are hanging in our yard waiting for the hungry animals to discover them.

We even got to eat a pancake breakfast with Santa! M had the time of his life until….
it came time to actually meet Santa and talk to him: He was suddenly very shy and completely forgot to say all the things he had planned on saying. :) It’s ok though because Mommy has Santa’s phone number and will be giving him a call to let him know what M would like. ;)

For more Tot School posts go here.

Have a beautiful Christmas with your families! :)

Books of the Week – Dec. 19, 2009

Whew, I didn’t know if I’d get around to writing this post or not. (being as how I’m still on my “break”, hahahahahaha; I think I’m back, I just don’t want to actually say so for some reason.  Crazy girl.)
I have to tell you about one of our favorite Christmas books… Little Rabbit’s Christmas, by Harry Horse.
 
This is a book about a little rabbit who wants a red sled for Christmas.  He loves this sled.  Loves it.  And of course the Christmas Rabbit brings him his sled.  Little Rabbit suddenly feels very conflicted – he wants his friends to admire the sled, but he doesn’t want to share it.  He goes off where he can be alone with his sled, but that isn’t much fun either as there is no one to watch him sliding down the hill. 
Little Rabbit gets into a bit of trouble and ends up stuck in the snow with the red sled broken.  (M yelled “OH NO!” at this part, he was really into this book, hee hee.)  Little Rabbit’s friends are more generous than he, thankfully, and they help him out, fix his sled and even give it a new coat of paint.  Then they all enjoy sledding for the rest of the day… together.  Little Rabbit learns that the best things are even better when they are shared with friends. 
This book is fun to read, keeps M interested, and has so many good (yet subtle) lessons about friendship, sharing, helping, and how to handle one’s feelings appropriately.  There’s even a little lesson about listening to your mama when she tells you to wear your mittens. :)  Such a cute book and we all love it.  This is going on our “buy” list for sure.
For more book reviews, visit the link-up at Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns!
Have a beautiful day! :)

Stringing Ornaments and Spelling Names (printable included!)

I found a  fun activity at kizclub.com, and tweaked it a bit for my own purposes…

Now one of M’s shelf activities for the week is this stringing and spelling activity.  I am working on helping him identify his name, so I created these ornaments from cardstock and then made a mini-picture of what his name should look like once the ornaments are strung together.
I also made one that spells Mommy and one that spells Daddy.  Hopefully by the end of the week we’ll have all three hanging on the wall. :)

I traced my ornament template onto several pieces of colored cardstock, cut them out, added details and letters with a black marker, then laminated them.  I punched two holes at the top where the hanger would be for real ornaments, and put it all in a box with a needle and yarn.  M loved doing this, and loved that it was his name and his “special letters”! 
The printable I’ve created has the large ornament template as well as rows of smaller ornaments in color.  You can print these and cut them where you need to, then add the letters you want with a black marker.  I’ve included a page of black and white ones too if you want to color them in yourself or use different colors.  There are instructions on the first page of the .pdf file.  Click the image below to take a look and download:Have a beautiful day! :)

Music Time – Printable Christmas Song Pages!

I am making an effort to bring more music into our days. Several months ago I made a songbook for M using a simple 3-ring binder:
I found clipart to represent each song, which I put at the top of each page. I printed out about 25 songs to start with and since then I’ve added many more.


M has a small stash of instruments:
Some are homemade… we don’t claim to be very fancy here. :) He has a harmonica, jingle bells, tambourine, a shaker I made for him from a soda bottle with beads and buttons etc., a triangle, and a metal bowl with a wooden spoon that he uses for a drum. You can just imagine the music we make. ;) He loves to sit with the song book in front of him and hand out the instruments. He has become very good at knowing which song goes with which picture.
We sit around and play “music” (I use that word very, very loosely) and sing our songs every once in a while. However, it’s usually put away and we really don’t think of it very often. Of course when the songbook was brand new it was a different story, but now… well, it’s been neglected of late.

Christmas seems like the perfect time to bring it back out and make sure our home is music-filled! I’ve typed up some of our favorite Christmas carols, and will have the song book along with the instruments set out on M’s activity shelves for the rest of Advent and the Christmas season. They may well stay there permanently. :)

Click on the image below to download our Christmas pages and make your own song book!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Books of the Week – December 5, 2009

Christmas books this week – of course! :)  These are two favorites from last year that I put on hold for us two weeks ago so we could enjoy them again this year.  M was very happy to see these beloved books again!
Little Owl and the Star, by Mary Murphy
I think this book is perfect for very young toddlers, even babies.  The text is very simple and it evokes the feeling of expectation and joy well.  Little Owl has a “waiting feeling”, then comes a star and Little Owl follows it.  He finds baby Jesus and is filled with happiness when the baby smiles at him.  Then the star shines so bright it fills the world with light.  M still loves this book, even though it’s a bit simpler than the stories he is used to now.  I really recommend this one, it’s super-cute and sweet!

The Little Drummer Boy, by Katherine K. Davis
I have to admit, I’ve always loved this song.  And after reading  (er, singing) this book last Christmas, we have pretty much been singing it all year.  M loves the song as much as I do and while I normally am not a fan of books that are really just songs with illustrations, I LOVE this one.  I literally get chills in the last few pages.  
For more reviews, go to Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns!
Have a beautiful day! :)

Our First Week of Advent

I’ve been seeing so many great posts about Christmas crafts and Advent wreaths… so many good things out there!  M is still not really into crafting, but I did sneak a couple of things in, so thought I’d share with you how our Advent is going!
First off, here’s our Advent wreath, made totally from Dollar Tree finds (at one time in my life I would never have admitted this, now I’m proud of it.  Go figure!): It’s very simple… but we snazz it up a bit when Christmas arrives.  There are pretty iridescent red berries in the middle surrounding the white candle (which won’t be lit until Christmas Eve), which is sitting on a round mirror – it’s hard to see in the picture.  Also, each taper is in a star shaped holder which is also really hard to see.  Hm.  Just take my word for it, in real life it’s prettier than in this picture. ;)
Here’s our Jesse Tree so far: Yep, not a single ornament is actually on the tree.  I’m not sure why M has them in the “air” but I’m sure he has a good reason in that 3 year old brain of his.  Next year we might use a piece of felt shaped like a Christmas tree – ornaments on a Christmas tree is easier to understand, maybe??
Here’s the little box we use to hold his nightly treasures, as well as the little manger with it’s daily pieces of “hay”: He calls it “The Jesus box”, hee hee.  And checks it multiple times per day hoping some candy has magically appeared in it.  (He gets a chocolate kiss in it each evening.)
Also, the little tree we have on the fridge that he puts a sticker on each evening (sticker also “appears” in the Jesus box :) ): Obviously it is not big enough for 22 more stickers.  Someone judged wrong when she cut it out.  So, it should be interesting-looking by the time Advent is over.
Now, for the crafts…
Wrapping paper with glitter mixed into the paint: See the glitter?  I wish my camera could capture it better:
And, he’s been begging to do sand art, which I swore would never, ever again be done inside after our first time.  Well, he talked me into it and made these: He really had a lot of fun with both of these little projects, and well, it’s something Christmassy, just not the cute crafts I was hoping for. However, I am glad that we will have these to look back on as the things he wanted to do this year.
Have a beautiful day! :)