More Christmas Advent Fun

Our nativity puzzle (this was the only picture I could find). We read about it, then cut it up and put the puzzle back together.
Christmas shakers: rice, food coloring, empty bottle. And now we have noise makers for New Years!

Ornaments

I really don't have time to detail the activities, maybe later. For now here are a bunch of photos. You can make up your own captions.

Christmas Counting Game

Count the number of ornaments on the tree and then put a clothes pin on the correct number down below.
We also counted snowballs. That was an easier one to make, but less fun to play.

Candy Garlands, Pipe Cleaner Wreathes, and More Cards

Getting ready to make the candy garland. Hope we have enough candies to make a long one.
Towards the end A helped by flying his plane over to the pile, selecting the next candy, and then dropping it off to me. This plane is one of his many creations. He'll find random objects and them obsess over creating something (usually a plane). The problem is he gets so frustrated when it doesn't work exactly how he sees it in his mind. Funny thing is, he has 8 perfectly good airplanes and 3 more helicopters in his toy box! The inventing/creating gene has definitely passed from father to son.
Here's the finished snake...er...uh..candy garland. There was absolutely no pretending that it was a giant snake. Nope, none of that. :-)

I stumbled on another craft somewhere in my surfing of the past week that I thought A could handle. Once again I overestimated his attention and ability, but we saw it through to the end anyway. It's a mini wreath made by wrapping pipe cleaners around a cardboard circle. Yeah, hideous, but a good activity to pass the time together. These were taken at the half-way point when A's attention was on it's last leg. The faces were all his idea.

Here's the lovely end product. I keep reminding myself that I have to hang it on the tree.
Another batch of cards made today. I was surprised at the interest and ability A had for this one. He did his own cutting and gluing (with my direction). During the crafting he told me these remind him of a jack-in-the-box. Clever little mind.

Holiday Cards: Take One

Today we started making some Christmas (ok so the PC term is "HOLIDAY") cards. I was hoping to get at least three Santa and three Snowman cards done, but I had to be happy with one of each style. So be it. I did the cutting, A did the gluing and drawing. Not bad.

Reindeer Ears

Using A's hands as a template for antlers we made some reindeer ears for him. I encouraged brown, but he thought blue was the appropriate color for his antlers. ("Blue is my favorite color mom.")
This picture was taken through our dining room table. So please ignore those crumbs and the butter smear left from breakfast. When I asked if we should trace my hand or his hand for my antlers he decided I should be a polar bear. So this is what we came up with. Not my best picture, but A is smiling big because I turned the screen around for him to see himself.
After we had our head gear in place A wanted to have fights (what else do little boys want to do?) between the reindeer and the polar bear. Good thing dad took over at that point.

Water Color and New Mediums

We tried a few different mediums with our water colors. Some worked and others, well the mess they made was fun.
We used string, a straw, and cotton balls. He enjoyed the challenge of dipping the straw into the paint water, sealing the top, and then letting go over the paper to make a drop. The cotton balls turned into mush, but A liked them a lot (as you can see by his discolored fingers). He couldn't do a whole lot with the string, but I would make a long stroke and then he would use the straw to put a drop of different color at the start of the stroke and then watch it bleed down the line. (Does that make sense, it's a hard process to explain.)