advent drawing, thinking cap thursday

We made an advent picture this week, We sat down at the table, grandma, myself, Flynn and Eli and we coloured pasted things, put stickers on. We talked about Christmas and the things we were sticking down. We cut up a colouring in Christmas book from last year, some left over stickers and some wrapping paper from Flynn's birthday. It was a really nice family time exercise, and part of the discussion was about what Christmas is like here in cairns for us. Note our picture has Santa in his wintry outfit and then tropical fish swimming around the top. Well that's Christmas in a nut shell for us, its weird being surrounded by images of wintry things when for us its the hottest time of year, we have thunderstorms and rain instead. Some years we even have cyclones for Christmas. Its good to have that conversation with my kids so they understand that whilst they are going to see a lot of images of Christmas for us that's disjointed and really for us Christmas is about summer and heat lots of water play and cranking the airconditioning till it feels like snow.

Once the kids were in bed i put number cards over the picture with blu tac and they can slowly pull them off as December counts down, and we can talk more about our Christmas. Great for learning numbers, concept of days in the month and a great way to learn about there own world.

also its nice to build the excitement towards Christmas

love sassy

christmas paper - tuesday treasure (a day late)

Its time for us to post some overseas Christmas goodies and we need some paper, so Flynn and i got busy today with some rollers and blue paint. I know that chrissy paper is cheap, but i think presents to loved ones wrapped in home made paper is a more thoughtful way to give gifts. Also it gives Flynn and opportunity to paint on really big bits of paper and that's always fun. It also makes the lead up to christmas that much more exciting for kids if they are involved in all the steps of gift giving. Flynn has been subjected to many christmas shopping trips lately as i madly try to get it done before the shops get to catastrophic. So he has helped choose presents, now he gets to make the paper, he will also be making cards and i may even employ his elfish little hands to manage the sticky tape at wrapping time. He will have a good understanding this way of the joy of gift giving, and i hope too that he will see christmas is about giving to loved ones not just about what hes getting.

ok so how did we make our christmas paper? We had some paper from flynn's daddy that he no longer needed, we got some silver paint and some blue paint, some little sponge rollers and i cut out some stencils. very basic stencils. I cut out a snowman and a snowflake and this was ok, but i cut them out of paper, big mistake they started to break and rip after the 3rd rollering. I then cut some stars out of a empty cat bikkie box and this worked fantastic. I cut one really big star, flynn really liked this one, and a few small stars. The biggest difference i noticed was he struggled with the first stencils because he was rollering around them, needed lots of help. But with the star stencils he was rollering the inside shape the star itself and this clicked with him so much better, interesting that the negative positive aspect would make a difference but at nearly four i can understand its easier to see what your doing. We quickly filled up two big pieces of paper, the silver paint was not bold enough so we combined the blue with it to get a shiny blue paint. I think the paper has worked out rather pretty, i think the key to stencil paper is to keep the stencils simple.

If your having trouble with the drawing up of a stencil you can always print a basic star from the computer, or just let loose and remember that your kids are very forgiving and will love whatever you do! my stars are a bit wonky x x

sassy

linked on mommy club wednesday linky & Its Playtime & tgif linky party & fun stuff fridays

Salt Dough Decorations

                                                              Salt Dough Decorations

Salt Dough Recipe;

1 cup of salt,

2 cups of flour

and 3/4 to 1 cup of lukewarm water.

(The amt of water depends on relative humidity.)

Mix the salt and flour together in a bowl, using spatula. Then add the water until a large ball has formed. Knead ball of dough at length on a lightly floured work surface

(somewhere smooth and easy to clean).

The quality of dough you finish with will depend on the time spent on kneading. If the dough is sticky add a mix in the right proportions of flour and salt, or keep adding flour to your bench.

 

Salt dough variations;

You can use coarse sea salt to get a rustic effect if you want.

Replace 2 tablespoons measure of flour with buckwheat flour

thus the mixture is easier to work with.

You can add glycerin which makes modelling easier,

or wallpaper paste (glue) to make stronger models.

Salt dough can be coloured prior to baking with natural colour e.g. coffee grounds, tumeric, chocolate powder or with gouache or food colouring.

 

Any leftovers will keep for a couple of days in a sealed container in the fridge.

 

Decorations.

Last Christmas Dylan's Preschool made christmas stars to thread & hang

which is where i got the idea.

I used cookie cutters for my shapes. roll out dough with a floured rolling pin to @ 1cm thick.

Cut out shapes required ( I used a tree, star, love heart & teddy bear cookie cutter). Re group leftover dough & repeat until used up.

I did actually put food colouring in my mix of green in half & red in half but it comes out quite a soft colour & for this purpose i wanted bright colour.

Make a hole in your decorations big enough (for the child

to thread) prior to cooking them. {If you forget you could drill holes but they may crack if your cooked dough is thin.}

I used a pointy nozzle from a paint bottle to make my holes.

Bake in a slow oven, so i baked mine at 120oc for a few hours to ensure they were really hard & dry.

 

Allow to cool, then paint (acrylic paint) & decorate. we painted ours then sprinkled glitter on the wet paint also. Using wrapping ribbon we threaded each decoration & hung some on the ceiling & some on our xmas tree.

Now a wee tip if you live in a humid climate lacquer them also, as the humidity can make them go soft again (like a stale biscuit & drop off their ribbon) Ideally spray can varnish or lacquer if you can get it, if not paint on varnish. You can re-dry them in the oven if they're not varnish'd & have gone soft (i only did this once while waiting to go shopping & grab some varnish, i don't know if you can keep putting them back in the oven, the glitter & paint were not affected.)

We have our decorations stored in the dry hot water cupboard in an airtight container & hopefully theyre not going mouldy!!! As next christmas i want to get them out & show Dylan what he made when he was 2 , he sat for over an hour decorating them i have never seen him sit so still. I did the process over a couple pf days to keep up interest first day we made the dough & cut them & baked them. Then a couple of days later we painted , decorated & threaded them, then next day we hung them.

They make a great pressie wrapped in cellophane with a ribbon too.

:D