Hey Y'all!! I know It's been about a month since I've shared a post, but can we say Christmas and BABY!! Yes, we welcomed Abby Lou into this world on the 18th of December!! I will be sharing more about her birth in the coming weeks, but for now I'm going to get caught up on all my Christmas posts.
I know Christmas is over, and what we did for our Christmas projects is a little obsolete, but maybe y'all can reference them for the 2020 Christmas season. Since I was VERY pregnant leading up to Christmas I decided to keep our Christmas tot school low key and super simple. I focused on getting all their projects done the first week of Christmas, except for their countdown to Christmas.
I found the above Santa countdown calendar on Pinterest a really long time ago and I have a copy of it on my computer, I just print it off every year. It's a super easy countdown, glueing cotton balls onto the appropriate day/number. I don't usually keep up with it on the weekends, we just do three cotton balls on Monday.
We made torn paper bulb ornaments. I simply free handed an ornament shape onto card stock that I cut out. Then I cut out a rectangle on black construction paper for the top of the ornament. I had the children glue torn pieces of construction paper to the ornaments. Once the glue dried we whole punched the top and put a piece of twine on them so they could hang them on the tree.
The children also made fruit loop Christmas trees. I cut out a tree on green construction paper then had the children glue fruit loop cereal to the trees. once the glue was dried we whole punched the trees and strung them with a piece of twine.
My children love to glue, paint, and color so those are the projects we try to do.
I know we've basically done this project multiple times now for different holidays, but it is still one of my little peoples favorite projects to do. There's something soothing about rolling a marble around in paint, lol.
For this project I cut out a tree on card stock. We placed the trees in a shallow baking pan, put two large dollops of paint on the tree and then allowed the children to roll marbles through the paint by tilting the pan different directions.
The children made paper plate wreathes. To make these wreathes I cut out the middle of a paper plate. Then I had the children glue torn pieces of green construction paper onto the wreathe as well as a red bow I cut out of red construction paper.
Thumbprint Christmas Light paintings was not one of my favorite tot school projects, and I doubt I do them again. I've since seen a variation of this project which I think is what we'll do next year. It was extremely messy and required a whole lot of adult/big kid help.
Now, my little kids thought it was grand fun finger painting, I think it was mostly just mama who wasn't having any fun, lol.
Of course no seasonal tot school is complete without a sensory box. This was not my planned sensory box for the Christmas season, but when I came across these cute hot chocolate wooden toys at Target, I just had to make a sensory box using them. This box had brown gift basket shreds, cotton balls, a toy whisk, and the wooden hot chocolate toys. As usually the sensory box was a huge hit and my children loved playing with it, even if it wasn't Christmas themed.
As you can see it was another holiday tot school with super easy projects and loads of fun for both mama and the kiddos (minus the finger painting, lol). I would have loved to have done a few more projects, but I'm learning sometimes less is more, and not over doing things is sometimes best for all parties involved. I did not over load the children and mama wasn't drowning in too many things to do. Because of our simple no-fuss tot school plan; we all looked forward to doing our daily craft, spending time together, and enjoying the Christmas season.
With Love & Hope,
Jennifer
