The rest of our Christmas learning

 I absolutely love this manger scene! I found it on this blog.  We printed it out on card stock and laminated them.  I at first would give her a piece of the scene as I told the story. The next time as I would give her a piece I would ask her different questions in order to see how much she remembered.  And she of course loved to just play with the pieces :)

 

One other Christmas activity we did, was "What comes next" using the nativity theme.  This is still a skill we are working on.






 Here we played Color Run!  Bella would come to me and I would give her a card that had a picture on it that was either green or red (obvious Christmas colors.)  She then would run to where the corresponding color was.  She LOVED this game.  We will definitely be doing this again and adding more colors to be more challenging!

Away in a manger

We are making a manger scene and talking about the significance of each part.  Here she is painting the parts for the manger and stable.

 Next we painted the backdrop blue and worked on stroke direction.  Then she put scraps of green down for the grass.

 Then I cut a start out of cardboard for her and covered it in glue.  She then got to sprinkle little beads onto the star.

On the last day we put all the pieces together to make our manger scene.

 So proud of her work!

CHRISTmas

These are the activities we are doing that center around Jesus and the nativity.  I will put links of the places I get the ideas and worksheet from.

Here she is learning letters using key phrases from the story of Christ's birth.  She is learning to match capital and lowercase, as well as letter identification.

I got this Christmas coloring book from this website.  It's not solely revolved around the nativity but it has great pictures and it works through the alphabet.  She is using Crayola dry erase crayons and I have the papers in sheet protectors.

We also worked on sorting people and animals from the nativity.  We did something similar for thanksgiving.  She does really well on these activities.

Here we worked on size sorting.  This day we focused heavily on Baby Jesus also, so we would talk about the significance of Baby Jesus at Christmas also.

We worked on colors and following directions.  This was more challenging for her as she wanted to do her own thing, and she is still working on colors

And we always love it when Grammy helps :)

Here we are working on counting and identifying the corresponding number. I had originally planned on using small balls of play dough to place not he correct number but she wanted to use the Do-a-dot markers.  She does well with counting but we are still working on being able to identify the correct number.  

Bella worked on shadow matching the different parts of the nativity scene.  This was great to help her learn to pay attention to detail.
















I have more things I plan on doing but most of things are all part of the Packs that I linked up to in this blog. I may do another post of those activities! We shall see what time allows for :)

Sometimes PJ's is what you get

So I was talking to a mommy friend of mine today and she was wondering how I got learning time in with Bella while having 6 month old twins (who still don't sleep through the night.)  Let me first say, I have an amazing husband who cares more that I care for our children than our house and will help me to that end.  He helps me around the house soooo much and when he comes home and doesn't complain about the messy house - but asks what Bella did for the day, I know he approves.  So that being said, I will often put my house on hold.

When Bella wakes up, she watches Sesame street and eats her breakfast.  Meanwhile, the twins are generally having some independent play. During that time I try to do the dishes and eat my breakfast. Then comes the twins morning nap.  This is when I capitalize on learning time. I only spend 1/2 hr of "structured" learning time.  She then can do as she pleases.  However, I do somewhat chose what is available to her to play with.  So if we have a theme going, I have play revolve around that.

Also, I probably do this more for myself, selfishly.  I am a teacher at heart, and Bella (sometimes much to her disapproving) is my student.  :)
As for when do I prepare everything-at night while the kiddos are sleeping.  I also have a lot of stuff already made from being a teacher.

I am more than willing to help whoever in this endeavor if you are interested in doing things like this with your kiddo.  Remember, Don't stress if you can't do it every day.  Because it doesn't always work.  And sometimes you play and work in ur PJ's... All day :)

Crawling, painting, sitting, cooking and a few other things.

Caiden is working hard on crawling and could care less about sitting lol

But we are still figuring it all out hehe

Ada is loving sitting and works on crawling every once in a while.  They are so different from each other :)

This is one of our go to christmas books.

Some other Christmas activities we have been doing is using xmas theme cookie cutters with play dough.  Play dough is a favorite right now, so we will probably be doing other activities using play dough... Stay tuned!

Bella loves to have her hands painted so we made this Christmas tree.  We worked on counting too during this craft.

I put dabs of paint on the paper and let her spread it around.  I'm a bit OCD about mixing colors so that is why I put the paint down. lol  Also to contain the mess I used a cheap cookie sheet that I got in a variety pack really cheap.

I had to put this one in because in all other tracing activities, I usually hold her hand and trace the lines for her, all the while saying the direction we are moving.  Today she did it by herself without me initiating. I love to see the "clicking" from learning :) and the fact that its my daughter... BONUS!

Bella got the Melissa and Doug Cookie Cutting Set. I love watching her with imaginative play.  She pretended the desk was the oven :)When the cookies were finished baking, she even shared with her brother :)

Christmas Fun

We made a Christmas tree while learning about bigger/smaller.  I cut the pieces out for her and I would then have her tell me which piece was bigger and she would then stick it on the paper.

she then got to use glitter paint, and LOVED it :)

We also had a Christmas bin that she got to explore

Some of the papers she's working on.  We have many more we will be working on.  I get a lot of my ideas from this Blog

 She then matched the color of the presents with the ornaments.








Then we worked on counting presents.  She definitely like the coloring activity more.

And this is just one of my Fav's!!!

Shapes-Baby style

The twins were working on Shapes, Colors, and stacking today....

So Inquisitive!

 Wait I'm not supposed to chew on that?