Phew! As I said at the beginning of this Advent Calendar of Christmas Activities, I’m not a super craftsy person (even though I’m working on becoming one now!), and this little project of making salt dough ornaments really reminded me about my inexperience… To begin with, I hadn’t realised that this activity would need to … More Making & decorating salt dough ornaments
These little cards/gift tags which we’ve been making today were really more about the process than the final result. Making confetti, potato printing, painting, cutting, glueing, and finally sticking a star at the top if each tree! Still, I think they’ll look great under the tree, especially if used for a gift wrapped in a … More Christmas gift tags/mini cards
Today we got a couple of Santas made, so now they can help us looking after our two Rudolphs from the other day! Again, we used empty toilet rolls as base, and added felt, pipe cleaners, toy stuffing (for beard, alt. use cotton wool or other similar material), tiny pom-poms and googly eyes. We also … More Homemade Santa!
We’re now over half-way through our Advent Calendar of Christmas Activities! Today’s activity was another christmassy craft: a paper heart garland. As I’ve said before, I try to make sure that the craft projects we do are pretty simple, in order to maximize our chances of a good result, and minimize frustration along the way. This … More Making a paper heart garland
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 … More Stormy weather and pipe cleaners
Sometimes, the things I expect to be difficult are no problem, while other turn out to be much harder than anticipated. Like today, when we cut these paper snowflakes: Penguin cut out the circular shapes all by himself, which was brilliant! It takes a level of coordination which just hasn’t been there until now. Lovely … More Paper Snowflakes – “different, not less”
Day 8 in our Advent calendar of Christmas activities brought us Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, times two! Of course it’s entirely possible to make just the one, but I’ve found that it works much better for us to work in parallell, making one each of any crafting or other project we do, as this means … More Not One Rudolph, But Two! – An Easy Christmas Craft
Our advent activity today was making these paper angels, which I’d found a post about via Pinterest (I’ll put a link to that page, on the “Buggy and Buddy” blog, at the bottom of this post). They are nice and simple things to make, and all you need is paper, scissors, ruler and a glue … More Making Paper Angels
Today we made another couple of ornaments for our little Christmas tree, and Penguin really enjoyed this. As soon as I got the beads out he came to sit down at the table and was keen to get started! So, after putting some suitable Christmas tunes on, this is what we did: Firstly, I strung … More Super Simple Beadwork Ornaments
It’s December! The run-up to Christmas usually makes me more stressed than excited, but I’m now going to make a real effort to celebrate and enjoy the season with Penguin. So, everyday until Christmas Day we’ll do some kind of ‘christmassy’ activity together, and post it here, like an Advent calendar (may even contain chocolate … More Making Mini Christmas Crackers
Sensational Learning with Penguin 