Gifts for the Grandparents

For the second year in a row, I made calendars for the grandparents and great-grandparents using Walgreens.com. I have been very happy with the quality of the photos and durability of paper on these calendars. This year I even made one for us to keep. :) If you decide to use Walgreen to make a calendar, I would wait until they offer a discount since they do this pretty often. I saved $27.00 on five calendars.

Feliz Navidad- Graham Cracker Houses

We are not huge fans of gingerbread over here so we decided to make our "gingerbread houses" out of graham crackers. They are also much easier for little guys to help with.

First the kids laid out the pieces to icing and decorate with candy.

We laid the pieces out to dry for a little while and then we constructed the walls and roof using massive amounts of icing to hold it together.

Diego and his cousin and very proud of their houses.

Mateo didn't get to help building them because we purposefully waited until he was napping to make them. Luckily his big brother and cousin were nice enough to share.
Feliz Navidad

Early Christmas Present

My husband finally finished the Lego Table that he built for the boys. I am very pleased with him because instead of the spending $100+ dollars to buy one like we had planned to, he made this one for under $30. Diego already knew about the table so we decided to make it an early Christmas present and distract him from his constant "Is it Christmas yet?" questions. It has already provided HOURS of fun. Thank you, Papi!

These are a couple of cars that Diego built that day.

Plate Making Kits

At one of our playgroups a few weeks ago, one of the mothers brought this plate making kit for the kids to do as Christmas presents. She bought her kit at Hobby Lobby but this looks like the same product. Basically the box contains pieces of paper that your children draw on or decorate. You mail the papers off to the company mentioned in the packet and for $7.00 they turn your child's drawing into a plastic plate. We just got our's back and I love them! I plan to do it again when Mateo is old enough to draw. Since they are gifts for Mami and Papi, we have not yet used them. I will update this post after we use them if there is any news to report about their condition.

Diego drew a Triceratops sleeping.

On this plate Diego drew a picture of his family. My favorite part is that our dog "Nacho" looks a lot like Mateo. :)

Christmas Math- Mazes

I consider this a math activity since it helps with spacial skills. I found this maze and several others here. I like that there are mazes of different difficulty levels. This one ended up being too easy so I printed off a more complicated one. I cover them with a piece of contact paper so that Diego can use a dry erase marker. It drives me nuts when he marks on something for 2 seconds and then throws it in the trash. I am hoping to keep these for next year and then for Mateo in a couple of years.

Feliz Navidad- D's Christmas Show

This morning D had his Christmas program at his preschool. The two year olds cried, the three year olds kids danced and sang to Christmas songs (en español of course), and Santa even made an appearance. I was very proud of D. A year ago I know that there is NO way that he would have stood in front of the crowd at all, let alone sang and danced. This picture is of D dancing to the song "Los peces en el rio" (The fish in the river) which is a very traditional Christmas song in Spanish. I have more cute pictures of the program but they include other kids in his class and I do not want show their pictures without their parents permission.

This is the first picture of D with Santa since he was 11 months old. He has refused to sit on Santa's lap since. Today we told him to ask Santa for what he wanted. He asked Santa for Legos and Transformers.
This is M's first picture with Santa. Since D was so against last year, we just skipped it for both of them. He did pretty good but I do think the concerned expression on his faces says a lot.

Christmas Math- Counting up to 8

One of the Four Preschool Goals for Math is counting up to 8 objects. I first cut out a Christmas tree from construction paper. Next, I covered the tree with Christmas stickers. You need several of each type of sticker.

Next, I made an "answer sheet" with one of each sticker represented on the tree. D's challenge was to count the stickers on the tree and tell me how many there were. I wrote the numeral on the notecard. So that we could do this activity more than once, I covered the notecard with contact paper and I wrote with a dry-erase marker.

Christmas Sensory Tub

My nineteen month old is driving me crazy by pulling off the ornaments from the Christmas tree. To satisfy his desire to touch the pretty, shiny ornaments, I made this Christmas sensory tub today. First I filled it with a TON of cotton balls and then added some of the ornaments from the tree. I still had to sit with him as he explored since some of them are breakable, but he loved being able to touch them. I plan to change out the ornaments each day. Hopefully, this will prevent me from having to buy all new ornaments next year!

For more great ideas check out the posts that I am linking to: Adventures of Bear, Activity Mom, and Our Worldwide Classroom.

Christmas Math- Shapes

One of the Four Preschool Math Goals is to identify at least four shapes. D knows more than four so I used this activity more for cutting practice (something that D loves to do.) I drew the shapes on different colors of construction paper and D insisted on doing EVERYTHING himself after that, from the cutting to the gluing. D will be four at the end of the month and I am amazed at how much he has grown and matured in last year.

Christmas Math- Number Recognition

I found this great website that describes Four Preschool Goals for Math.

Colors and shapes

• knows about colors and shapes
• identifies 6 colors
• identifies 4 shapes

Create a two-piece pattern

• creates and understands two-piece patterns

Compare objects

• uses words to make comparisons (bigger, biggest, smaller, smallest, heavier, heaviest, etc.)

Counting

• Can count to 20
• Can count a group up to 8 objects
• recognizes numerals 1 - 10

I have used these goals to help me plan out some Preschool Math activities this month. I figured that using Christmas as a theme can make anything fun-- even math.

Here is our first game:

Number Recognition 1-20

Do you recognize this? It is an empty Christmas ornament container.

I cut out the numbers from 1-20 using green and red paper and taped them to the bottom of the container. To play the game, D stood a few feet away from the box and tossed an object (we used dice) into the box and he had to name the number with the dice.
Variations:

Younger children:

Color Recognition

Leave off the numbers and just put different colors in each square.

Older children:

Addition

Write down the numbers and add them up.

More or Less

Throw two dice into the box and figure out which number is larger or smaller.

Nativity scene magnets

I bought these Nativity scene magnets from a catalog that my neighbor's daughter was selling out of to raise money for the marching band. I did not have high expectations, but D loves them. They actually have tiny numbers (up to 25) on them so that you can put one on the fridge each day until Christmas. We are just using them to talk about the story of Jesus's birth. I am currently looking for a simplified (3 year old level) Christmas eve story in Spanish so that we can "act" it out with our magnets. If you are interested in finding them, I saw a set at Hobby Lobby yesterday for $13.00.

Let the countdown begin!... Almost

I just realized YESTERDAY that if I am going to get our count down to Christmas activities going on December 1st I only have a couple of days left. Where did the time go?

Last year D and I did a paper chain in Christmas colors to help him understand when Christmas day would arrive. This year since he is a little older and much wiser, I wanted to do something a little different. I can not take credit for the idea. I found a printable here. I thought that it would be way to small, however, so I redrew it on a larger piece of paper. I also mixed up the numbers so that they are not in order. D can identify 1-10 easily but gets confused with the numbers beyond. The idea is very simple. You simply place a piece of cottonball on the beard of Santa to cover the appropriate number until you reach #25.

After I finished the Santa calendar, I remembered that I have two children and nothing for M to do. Just kidding, I know that I have two children. I just keep forgetting that M is not a little baby anymore and he is capable and willing to participate. Since naptime was about over I had to whip up something quick. This Christmas tree was what I came up with. M obviously does not know his numbers yet so I will have D help him find them and we will put a different colored circle (an ornament) to cover each number. I will make a star to put on the #25.

To see what some very creative mommies are doing to get ready for Christmas check out The Adventures of Bear, The Land of Pleasant Living, Our Worldwide Classroom, and The Fifth Street Place.