Recycled Christmas Card Puppets

We have a lot of Christmas cards from previous years in our craft box and this week we used them to create some Christmas themed pop stick puppets.
We have made these before (post here) using recycled books, but this time Bubble was able to make them almost all by herself. Squeak wasn't interested in the making part but she has played with the puppets incessantly, so I'd say they were a success for both of their age groups!

WE USED:

* old Christmas cards
* pencil
* scissors
* blu tack/sticky tack
* pop sticks

Firstly we cut our Christmas cards down the middle, keeping the 'sentimental' side with all of the writing and using the fronts of the cards for our craft activity.

Bubble picked out the cards she wanted to turn into puppets and I drew outlines for her to cut around using a lead pencil.

Bubble then used BluTac to attach her pictures to pop sticks to create her puppets.

Our puppets were even more fun in some play dough 'snow'.
She ended up making 16 of these, it is definitely one of her favourite craft activities from the last few weeks!

Playdough Snowman

Earlier in the week we made some vanilla scented play dough (instructions in this post from last year) which the girls have been using for all sorts of Christmas play. Today we used it to make snowmen and decorated them using beads and buttons - they turned out pretty cute!

WE USED:

* play dough
* beads and buttons

First we rolled our dough into balls to build our snowmen, then the girls used their beads and buttons to decorate them.
This was an excellent activity for developing fine motor control and imaginary play.

Scrubbing Brush Christmas Tree

Hmmm not a very glamorous sounding post title, but I'm not sure what else to call it! This was not only fun (it involved paint and stickers, how could it go wrong ;-D) but was also a great fine motor activity.

WE USED:

* large sheet of paper
(we taped together A4 sheets)
* brown paper
* green paint
(we mixed some ordinary green paint and some green glitter paint together to get a nice effect)
* scrubbing brush
* heavy dish for paint
* glue
* scissors
* stickers

We put our green paint into a heavy dish so the girls could dip the brush in easily.

I tacked our paper onto a window to make any accidental paint swipes easy to clean up, then we cut a tree 'trunk' from some brown paper and glued it on.
The girls then added the leaves to our Christmas tree using their scrubbing brushes (which they thought was utterly hilarious).

Great job girls!

I helped Bubble to draw a star shape on some yellow sticker sheet and she cut it out to put on top of our tree.

Then it was time to decorate our tree. We used small dot stickers but you could use anything really! Glitter glue pens, silver ink pens, paint dabbers - you could get all sorts of beautiful effects.

Our finished tree ready to hang on the wall.

I especially love the AWOL baubles in the corner :-D

Jingle Bell Balloons

We added a bit of a festive twist to our Wobble & Shake balloons this week. This activity was a hit with both girls and was great for both gross and fine motor as well as providing sensory fun.

WE USED:

* balloons
* small bells
(available from craft/discount stores)
* balloon ties

This activity was very easy to put together, we just pushed small bells into the balloons (we put two bells in each), inflated them and tied them off using twist ties so that the balloons could be reused again.

The girls had a blast kicking, throwing and shaking them to make them jingle.

Cheap and easy Christmas fun :-)

Christmas Cracker Count Down

Between work, appointments for the girls and life in general December has snuck up on me! We put up our felt Christmas Tree Countdown from last year but I needed a quick and easy 'treat advent' to put together for the girls too (after all what's Christmas without a few treats?! ;-D).
I found some Christmas crackers on sale just in time and we managed to sneak it in - whew!

WE USED:

* 24 cheap Christmas crackers
(we found ours in a major retail store for $1.50/box of 6. Alternatively you could make your own using toilet rolls like we did HERE last year)
* small treats
(we used miniature Santa chocolates and stickers)
* blank label stickers
* pen/marker/pencil

We managed to find all of our Christmas-y things on sale and spent way under $10 on this activity. You could bring this even lower by making your own crackers/fillers.

Using a pen Bubble wrote the numbers 1-24 on our labels (we only had long rectangular labels on hand so we cut them in half).

We opened up one end of each cracker by gently untwisting it.

We were then able to add our advent treats inside. You could use tweezers to remove the hats/jokes/toys from inside to make more room but we left them in there.

We added two chocolates and two stickers to each cracker.

The girls then added the count down number stickers to the front, one for each cracker.

Each day they get to pull a cracker together and we're one day closer to that magical Christmas night! :-)

Pretend Food Play - Juice Bar

This little game was something the girls invented while playing together the other day, it was so cute and creative I thought I'd share. We've been using our juice fountain a fair bit to make different juices from all of the summer fruit that is coming into season at the moment, and all that juicing seems to have inspired some pretend play.

WE USED:

* cups
* straws
* play food
(fruit and vegetables mainly)

The girls had spread out a picnic rug and put their tubs of pretend food in the middle. I was instructed to sit down and make my 'juice order'.

I chose the fruit for my juice and the girls made me my drink, complete with straw. This one was watermelon, mango and strawberry, mmm mmm :-)

Bubble got very inventive with her drink creations. Not sure I'm overly keen to try this one involving fish and steak!

We spent ages playing this game making different combinations and flavours.

We even gave milkshakes a go :-)

Incy Wincy Spider

If there's one thing our girls enjoy as much as painting, it's singing. Incy Wincy Spider is a firm favourite at the moment, so when I saw this post on Serving Pink Lemonade (awesome Blog by the way, check it out if you haven't already) I was inspired to add a little more 'something' to our singing sessions.
Plus I've been dying to see how easy it is to thread a needle through a ping pong ball so we could make some decorations for Christmas with them. Turns out, pretty easy! Stay tuned for that post ;-)

WE USED:

* ping pong ball
* twine/wool/string
* thick embroidery needle
* scissors
* paper towel tube
* blue ribbon cut into short lengths
* black pipe cleaners

optional:

* glue
* yellow felt

First we cut our pipe cleaner into four lengths and Bubble twisted them together to make our Incy Wincy Spider. Make sure you cut the pipe cleaner lengths short enough that your spider will fit up and down the cardboard tube.

Using the embroidery needle I threaded some twine through the centre of a ping pong ball and tied it off on one end.

We tied some lengths of blue ribbon onto the twine at around the same length as the paper tube was. The blue ribbon represented our 'rain' so we were excited to find some sparkly sequined ribbon in our stash.
Just under the ribbon we tied on our pipe cleaner spider.

We made our ping pong ball into a sun by cutting a circle of felt and gluing it to the front.

We then threaded the twine (with the ribbons and spider attached) down inside the paper towel roll (or 'water spout' :-D).

When the sun 'rose' Incy Wincy Spider would disappear up the water spout.

Then the rain would wash him back down again!
The girls loved this, it's still in our musical instruments box and has been getting a workout.
Am I sick of singing Incy Wincy Spider yet? Ummm... just a little ;-D