Preschooler Christmas Activities: Homemade Christmas Ornaments

I love filling our Christmas tree with homemade ornaments. Here's some ideas for your tree:

We cut these out of foam paper and wrote on them some of our goals to "be better" in the year to come. Of course, most of my husband's were "Help Mom" + whatever I'd written down as my goal, such as "Help Mom be more patient."







He did say he'd help more...

This next one was the ornament I sent out to all the grandparents. I found some wood scraps at Home Depot and had my neighbor cut them down into these small blocks. Then I painted them and used Modge Podge to seal a picture of my daughter onto the front. We drilled a hole in the top and there you have it! Cute photo blocks.



This reindeer is one of my favorite. I found this ornament in a box my mother-in-law gave me, so I shall give her credit for the idea. Cute and simple.

Materials:
3 popsicle sticks
glue
googly eyes
red pom-pom
ribbon










Have fun with these!

Toddler Activities for Christmas: how to grow a Christmas tree

Ever check the dollar bins at Target? That's one of my favorite places to find cheap and easy activities, such as this one I found recently. You can supposedly grow your own Christmas tree. Hm. I found another one that grows tiny white flowers like snow on the ground.
So we planted our seeds and we'll see what comes up!







Another great place to check around the holidays is JoAnne's. They always have $1 crafts near the checkout counter. They also put all their holiday supplies up front so you don't have to go hunting for red and green all over the store.

Toddler Activities for Christmas: Frosty

Again, a classic and simple Christmas craft that is still fun to make!
(It even held my 22 month old's attention.)

Materials:
construction paper
glue
cotton balls
black & orange sticky felt
three round objects (small, med & large)
red felt

Step One: Help your toddler trace the three circles, making the shape of the snowman.




Step Two: Glue on your cotton balls, filling in the snowman's body.


Step Three: Add embellishments, such as black felt buttons, hat, and an orange carrot nose. Cut out a strip of red felt for a scarf and you're done!





You can also glue your snowman to a popsicle stick to make him more puppet-like.

This would be fun to do while watching the classic Frosty the Snowman. We just found a copy (VHS) at the thrift store for $1. Score!

Christmas Activities for Toddlers and Preschoolers: Fruit Loop Ornaments

This Christmas, I'm all about quick and simple activities that keep the girls busy without requiring a ton of effort on my part! Here's a fun one that counts as a snack too...

Materials:
pipe cleaners
fruit loops cereal
beads (optional)

Didn't we all make these when we were younger? Just bend your pipe cleaner to whatever shape you want and add your fruit loops. Bend the ends a bit to keep the fruit loops from falling off.






We did a couple with beads instead of fruit loops. This activity is great because it takes a little while for their little fingers to get the fruit loops onto the pipe cleaner, but it seems to still hold their attention. Plus they get to eat a few in between.

Preschooler and Toddler Activities: Family Wreath

Just so you know, there are some activities that we spend a lot of time on and look SO cute on the internet or in a book or in my head...and then we finish and I take a picture and discover that our final product is well...definitely home-made. Sometimes I consider redoing it after my kids go to bed so you can all think that I'm such a Martha Stewart mommy, but that totally defeats the purpose of this blog!
So here's one of those activities where the original idea and my final product are...well, different.

Materials:
paper plate
cupcake wrappers
glue
ribbon

Step One:
Cut a hole in the center of your paper plate for the wreath.

Step Two:
You can cover the plate with flattened cupcake wrappers (silver looks nice). I skipped this part and made all of our wrappers into flowers. To make the flowers, fold your cupcake wrappers a few times and cut "V" shapes into the top. If your preschooler is trustworthy with scissors, he/she can make the cuts. If not, they can have fun unfolding the flowers once you cut them.









I only had silver and white wrappers, but these mini wrappers from Martha Stewart would look awesome.

Step Three: Glue your flowers onto the paper plate and tie your ribbon at the top.

Step Four: On our white wrappers, we wrote some ideas of what we could do to be more like Jesus this Christmas. This was my favorite part, even if our wreath turned out to be less than perfect. There's just something special about seeing the word "pray" and "love" in my little three year old's handwriting.


5 days til Christmas!

Winter Activities for Toddlers and Preschoolers: Snowflakes

This year I wanted to do something a little different than the typical paper snowflake. Here's some fun and "unique" ideas for snowflakes:

# 1"Fan-tastic" Snowflakes:

Materials:
Construction paper
hole punch
string
stapler or tape

Fold your paper in half lengthwise and then cut it in half. Fan-fold your paper in half-inch folds and staple it in the middle. Trim the ends so they come to a point and then punch holes wherever you want (your toddler can help you with this part).






Have your toddler open up the fan and help them tape (or you can staple) the ends together to create a snowflake!

See original here

#2 Beaded Snowflakes

Materials:
white pipe cleaners
small/med. clear beads
clear or sparkly thread
needle
Christmas pom-poms

Step One: Cut six pipe cleaners in half and wrap one of them tightly around the other eleven.




Step Two: Have your toddler spread out the pipe cleaners until it looks like a snowflake.


Step Three: String your beads onto each pipe cleaner. The beads I had were pretty large, so I only put 2-3 beads on each pipe cleaner. If you get smaller beads, you can obviously put more without weighing it down too much. (Bigger is easier for little fingers though!)






Step Four: With your needle and thread (I used gold thread), sew on three Christmas pom-poms and hang your snowflake for display! They could of course work as ornaments as well.

See original here.

Here's some other great ideas I found:
Glittery Snowflake Window Clings
*I'm planning on doing this one this week; I'll let you know how it goes
as long as baby doesn't come before I get to it!



Pasta Snowflake
Clothespin Snowflake

Beaded Snowflake

Martha Stewart's Pipe Cleaner Snowflake


Have fun with these!

Advent Calendar for Christmas

My mother-in-law told me about this idea last year and I recently saw it again here. I finally put one together this year and my girls have LOVED it. Every morning after we wake up, we come downstairs and they get to pull down a sock and find a surprise inside. I make them recite the date, "December 4th" so that they can remember that we're counting down (or up?) to Christmas.

Materials:
baby/toddler Christmas socks
treats or small toys
ribbon
clothes pins or paper clips




I had a pack of mini clothes pins that would have worked perfectly, but I can't find them anywhere! I used paperclips which work too, but it's nice to write the numbers (or dates) on the clothes pins to help them count down.
(They attached the numbers to the socks here)



21 days to go!

Toddler and Preschooler Activities: Countdown Chain

K, so we're already at the 9th of December (and still no baby!), but it's not too late to make this countdown chain with the entire family. You could even make it a shorter countdown, such as "days until we go to see Santa" or "days until we drive to Grandma's house."

The twist on this countdown is that you write on each chain what your toddler (and other members of the family) can do to help others this Christmas.

These were a few of my favorite words my toddler came up with (with some help):

If you have a preschooler, it is great practice for them to write simple words with your help. If you're doing this with a toddler, you can have them help you tape the chains together or let them draw pictures on the strips. You can also use stickers or other decorations.

This one says, "4 love." I think she just wrote a 4 instead of an "L" at first.




Let your toddler hang their chain in their room or wherever they'll remember to take one off each day until your "goal" is reached!