Second Week of December

Hello Everyone!  I'm glad to say that I have been done with most of my Christmas "to do list" for almost a week now.  So the stress level that could be there is reading "low" currently.  That is such a good feeling... let's see how next week goes.

Can I tell you how excited the children are for Christmas!?!  These last two weeks before the "big event" are the hardest on all that are working with young children.  My plan is keeping them busy with a lot of projects, games, etc... so that all that excitement doesn't come spilling over.  Well... at least I thought I was keeping them busy but it just doesn't look like it from this week's "wrap up" of what we've done.  The only bonus is most of the things we did seemed to take them a very long time to tackle and with getting outdoors a few days, going down to the basement (a treat for them), and playing games, playdough, and all that fun... I guess we did stay pretty busy.

We did start our "Letter Kk Book" this week but we didn't get it finished... so I will post it next week.

We did, however, complete several Christmas projects this week.
From an idea found on Pinterest we tore green construction paper to make our own Christmas trees. 

We painted paper plates to make reindeers from Danielle's Place.  We only used one plate and didn't make it a card holder... just a reindeer.

We also made these lovely Christmas trees from Danielle's Place by painting an empty toilet paper tube brown and then using glue to put cones with the edges cut one on top of the other.  We goofed up a bit as I didn't try one prior to doing it and you need to put the ornaments on the edges of the cones or they won't show up... stickers might work better to be applied after the tree is done.  All and all, I was very happy with how they turned out.

These trees from Danielle's Place also turned out very cute.  We used a foam bead star and a pipe cleaner and then strung beads onto the pipe cleaner to make this simple tree.

We started our gifts... handprint calendars.  I can't show them here but what fun we had!!!

And lastly we talked about St. Lucia day and made an evergreen crown.  We used a paper plate, tissue paper, and printed candles.  Role playing is always fun when we discuss this day and I only wish we would have also made star boy hats, as the boys would have preferred that.