Today we’d hoped to go to Leeds Castle, to visit their Christmas market and see the seasonal displays inside the castle. But we woke up to dreadful weather, with very strong winds and pouring rain, so we decided to stay at home.
To get our daily dose of Christmasness, we lit some candles, chose a seansonal playlist on Spotify, and shared a clementine (love that smell!), before getting some pipe cleaners out to make a few more ornaments for our little tree.
We made candy canes and hearts, and the pipe cleaners we used were already stripy like this when we bought them, which suited us very well as we’re trying to keep things simple and fun. But you could of course make your own stripes using stems of single colours, twisting them around each other.
I made one candy cane and one heart as ‘templates’, and then got Penguin involved in making copies of these.
For each candy cane we used half a pipe cleaner. They were quite tough to cut through, so I held them while Penguin used both hands to get enough pressure on the scissors.
For each heart we used one pipe cleaner, bending it into shape and giving the ends a little twist to hold it together.
After making a few of these decorations, Penguin helped me hanging them in our tiny tree. If you make these, you might like to add a string to hang the hearts from, and they could look pretty in a window too, or perhaps in the center of a wreath.
So, that was number 10 in our Advent calendar! Not the grand Christmas market visit that we’d originally hoped for… But we still had a good day, and managed to get outside for a very windy walk in the afternoon. Later in the evening we baked a cake. And Penguin is still loving the Christmas scented playdough we made the other day! It so good to see him sit down and play with something for a decent amount of time, independently and on his own initiative, really getting into it, cutting out different shapes, squeezing, flattening, rolling the dough etc.
Child’s play is not child’s play to every child. And when it doesn’t come easy, you appreciate its significance all the more.
Sensational Learning with Penguin 