Letter to Santa today! Woo-hoo!

Indoor Time: Play Drop the Barrette in the Bottle. Here is the game as we played it in our home - but as you read on, you will see that you may need to be creative on recreating the game for yourself. Having two little girls, I have an abundance of small plastic barrettes. This game was created in an effort to get the girls to pick them up after they were strewn all over the living room. I took an empty plastic apple juice bottle (you could use empty milk jug, litre soda bottle, etc.) and had them drop the barrettes into the bottle, making sure that they started low and kept raising the height to make it challenging. (of course, for the 14 mo. old it was just enough to drop them in - total joy!) If you don't have barrettes find something else small enough to fit through the opening...crayons would work great.

Outdoor Time: An oldie but goodie, have some fun with Simon Says today. Be sure to get them to do things to burn some energy.


Story Time: Practice making up stories. Start with the favorite saying, "Once upon a time..." You tell a story then let your kids give it a try. This is great imagination practice for them. Don't criticize or try to add to their story - just enjoy what their little minds come up with, and let them know it. :)


Craft Time: Write a letter to Santa on Christmas stationery - the catch is, your kids will do the decorating to make it holiday stationery. If your kids are too young to do the writing themselves, you can write it for them, being sure to have them tell you what they want for Christmas. Draw a square in the center of the sheet and do all the writing inside the square. Then let your kids decorate all around the letter. Give them whatever works for their age and ability - glue, glitter, stickers, construction paper to cut out their own Christmas symbols, crayons or colored pencils for drawing, etc, etc. When it comes time to put it in the envelope, have them draw/color the stamp for the envelope - this step is completely optional. Go ahead and put a stamp on it if you would like to be part of the $185,000 or so that the postal service makes on Santa letters. But you can explain to the kids that Santa's letters don't require postage other than their own creation. (part of the whole being good thing)


Music Time: Put on some music and dance. Make a game out of it - the kids dance around as long as the music is on. Turn the music off (or down so you can't hear it) and the kids have to freeze. Done correctly, this can induce lots of giggles!


Art Time: Back to photography today. We took a break yesterday and colored a Christmas tree, but today we are back at trying to capture the perfect photo (or photos) to make into Christmas cards.