December Themes: Christmas et all : Decorations, characters, traditions,

December has finally arrived, and it has been a busy month! The main theme we focused on this month was Christmas, broken down into different sections. I am so glad I decided to do it this way, as it allowed me to get a lot of my Christmas to do list done at the same time! We focused on the decorations the first week. The second week we focused on characters, which included everything from Santa and his entourage, to the Grinch, to the holy family and the entire nativity line up. Our third week we focused on traditions, particularly the ones we are trying to start with our own family.

Decorations

One of the things we did this week was make salt dough ornaments. My son loved this! He helped to mix the dough and roll it out, and cut the shapes. Once they were baked and cooled, he painted them with acrylic paint, and I covered them with modge podge to give them a glossy look. I wanted to make these because this is his little sister's first christmas, and I like to make handprint ornaments for my kiddo's on their first Christmas. I did this with my son as well.

As with everything, there are so many ways to use something like this to learn. My son got to count with me while we measured ingredients, and we talked about all the different shapes we were making which brings a bit of the "characters" theme into it. We worked on our colours and brush skills when we were painting them. He will also be giving some of the finished results as gifts, which does tie in the "traditions" theme as well.

We also decorated the Christmas tree this week, which was a lot of fun! I look forward to putting up the tree every year. This year was especially exciting because my son knows what Christmas Trees are this year, and was so excited when he realized we would have our very own!

He also loved the chance to get to walk with us in the evening to look at all the Christmas lights in our neighbourhood. He waved at the inflatable Santa's and pointed at all the lights. I think Christmas will be a lot of fun with him this year, now that he's a little more aware of everything.

Characters

This week we focused on trying to introduce some of the important figures of the season. One of the first things we did was watch the movie "The Star" on Netflix. It is the story of the Nativity told from the perspective of the Donkey. It is actually a pretty entertaining little movie, I would definitely recommend checking it out if you have little ones!

We also have a small wooden nativity set that we've been letting him play with. Which has been helpful in at least teaching him the names of everyone.

We wrote a letter to Santa this week as well, and went and had photos taken with the man himself. He is behind glass this year and wearing a mask, but it was still a very exciting day for our kiddo.

His favourite character though seems to be Max, the Grinch's puppy. My kiddo is a real sucker for puppies of any kind so Max was an easy favourite!

It was awfully cold this week to be taking the kids outside to play so for gross motor skills this week, we played Reindeer Games. These included one I decided to call "Up on the Rooftop". I set a large ball on the ground and told my son it was "the world" and then chose a couple of chairs, couches and stairs that were designated rooftops. My son had to run in a circle around the world, and then climb up onto one of the rooftops, and then run around the world again and climb onto another rooftop, until he had made it to all the different houses the reindeer had to visit on Christmas Eve.

Another game was basically a shuttle run, I called it "express post". I put a small pile of toys and bean bags on the floor and put a box several feet away. My son had to run back and forth between the two, bringing one "gift" at a time to put in the box as fast as he could. It was a really great way to get out some of that energy from being cooped up all day!

Traditions

This was likely one of the most fun weeks we did, just because it involved so many of our favourite holiday activities, many of which lend themselves to preschool skills pretty well.

One of our traditions is an advent calendar, which of course my son loves because of all the treats. Unbeknownst to him, he is also learning his numbers while we search for which door we should open next!

We also baked cookies and decorated them this week, so lots of fine motor work and colour and shape recognition, along with some lifeskills work in the kitchen.

Something that has become a bit of a tradition in our home is making homemade gifts. We had made Salt Dough Ornaments earlier, but we also made bird feeders this year. The recipe is pretty basic, just gelatin and birdseed. I of course handled the hot water, but my son got to do all the mixing and pressing them into cookie cutter shapes. He even got to put the straws in place to make the holes for the string to go through.

I had previously dried some orange slices to add to these. We woke up one very cold morning to no heat, so running my oven for this was a good way to warm up the house! After they finally set we wrapped them up to hand out as gifts.

My favourite part about this is how excited my son was to give people gifts, particularly ones he had made himself. It's very easy for kids to get caught up in getting gifts with all the Santa talk. It's nice to have a way to instill the joy of giving them as well, and for us, making our own seems to be doing the trick!

Merry Christmas!

We are taking a few weeks off from everything for Christmas into January. Winter break if you will. So I am not sure if I will have anything to post in January or not, likely I will wait until February. I will be returning to work in January as well after finishing my 12 month Maternity leave. It seems to have flown by and I am sure going to miss all the extra time with my two littles.

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season, no matter what or how you celebrate! Merry Christmas!