Advent calendar day two…
Onto day two of the Christmas countdown – the excitement is building which is not so productive on a Sunday night, but still enjoying it!
Ornament calendar
Ringing in Christmas! The hidden picture for day two was Merrit and a green-clad elf friend ringing traditional church bells, while we made a bell ornament.
Lego City
While there are a number of Lego City kits based on police and ‘baddies’, it still surprises me to find a thief in advent calendars, especially on day two! It did not worry my son in the slightest and he is happily planning this thief joining his other Lego thieves and baddies after Christmas (we keep the advent calendar Lego together for Christmas).
Lego Friends
Day two and the Lego friends calendar produced a suspiciously large guitar! We’ve had guitars in advent calendars before, but this one is bigger than the Lego characters so I’m not sure who is meant to play it!
Christmas book
With Tinkles arriving yesterday, a Christmas elf story was a must read today! We have selected The Christmas Elf as our book tonight.
A hungry elf?
So the search was on this morning as the kids tried to find Twinkles – she was no longer under the tree as we left her last night!
In the end, I found her in the pantry so I wonder if she was hungry after her big trip from the North Pole yesterday? Or maybe she’s taking stock to see who is taking too many sweet treats?
Wrapping up for Christmas – Christmas book review
Wrapping up for Christmas %27%20fill-opacity%3D%27.5%27%3E%3Cellipse%20fill%3D%22%2316161a%22%20fill-opacity%3D%22.5%22%20rx%3D%221%22%20ry%3D%221%22%20transform%3D%22rotate(15.5%20-431.6%201629.4)%20scale(94.64042%20194.97817)%22%2F%3E%3Cellipse%20fill%3D%22%23cccdb8%22%20fill-opacity%3D%22.5%22%20rx%3D%221%22%20ry%3D%221%22%20transform%3D%22matrix(-107.00249%20-62.6052%2074.36074%20-127.09464%2056.4%2090.2)%22%2F%3E%3Cellipse%20fill%3D%22%239c9f2a%22%20fill-opacity%3D%22.5%22%20rx%3D%221%22%20ry%3D%221%22%20transform%3D%22matrix(21.44552%20-52.47073%20102.61058%2041.93837%2020.3%20257.1)%22%2F%3E%3Cellipse%20fill%3D%22%23515057%22%20fill-opacity%3D%22.5%22%20rx%3D%221%22%20ry%3D%221%22%20transform%3D%22rotate(105.9%20108%20193.4)%20scale(339.53535%2051.66286)%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fg%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E "| love santa")
illustrated by Livia Coloji
models & design by Picnic
Hinkler Books, Heatherton, 2018
Age group: 4 to 10 year olds
Format: 2 pages in an advent calendar
This is an unusual way to access a Christmas book, but perfectly sensible! Our press out decoration advent calendar is a fold out booklet of eight pages – two pages become the covers of the book and four pages hold the advent calendar itself, while the other two pages tell a story.
The story
A helpful elf, Merrit, adds a last minute gift to the sleigh but soon afterwards wonders why Santa is back so soon…
My review
I think the story is cute – Merrit wants a new born baby to get a rattle but the workshop is out of paper and she uses some pretty paper with swirly writing on it. Sure, it seems unlikely that Santa’s workshop would be out of wrapping paper, but we all have those Christmas Eve rushes!
Luckily, Merrit wakes when she hears Santa come back early and is able to help solve his problem of a missing nice girls and boys list.
The story has four images – which is a lot given it it a two page book – and they are all colourful and related to the story. If you look at the advent press outs, you can also see that the decorations work with Wrapping up for Christmas.
Yes, as a book it seems very short having only two pages, but there is plenty of content (this is not a two or three sentences a page picture book after all) and I didn’t feel the story was too short or rushed. And remember that this is part of a set – story, advent calendar and decorations all rolled into one package.
Would I recommend it? I enjoyed the story and illustrations so yes I think it is worth reading, but it is not much of a book – remember it is part of an advent calendar (and I thoroughly recommend the entire set) rather than a stand alone book!
December is here!
Welcome to December, and the start of 2018 advent calendars!
Love Santa December count down
This year, we are effectively doing four calendars each day!
What? Why? you ask… let me answer!
So we are doing the Lego City calendar and Friends Lego Advent calendars again because my kids love them and I appreciate getting a quality item each day rather than chocolate or rubbishy toys.
On top of that, we are doing an ornament advent calendar and a Christmas book calendar.
Each day we will share what we find inside the three calendars and which book we will read.
Ornament Calendar Day One & a Christmas read
The ornament calendar actually includes a lovely story inside it so we read it tonight instead of an actual book!
The calendar is a set of cardboard ornaments that you create after popping them out of the booklet. Once you pop out the ornament pieces, you can see a picture behind it so there are two surprises each day!
Our first ornament is a bauble, based on two pieces. The pieces are thick and sturdy, and can be placed back into the booklet if you wanted to store them for next year. Fitting them together is fairly easy, but the slots are shaped to give a firm fit that stays together.
It’s worth noting that the ornaments have a little hole for threading something through to enable hanging, but you have to find the something yourself. I used green sewing thread so it is close to invisible when we hung the ornament, but there was a bit of scrambling for something as I hadn’t thought ahead for it!
So then we read the story, Wrapping up for Christmas. With my daughter’s love of babies satisfied and seeing Santa take presents in his sleigh, we enjoyed seeing how an elf and Santa dealt with a simple mistake in a positive way – a great start to our Christmas reading!
Lego City Day One
It’s not a very Christmassy start, but the City calendar had a spaceship behind the first flap. A spaceship or rocket was also in the 2015 (a spacecraft) and 2015 (two rockets) Lego City advent calendars.
Lego Friends Day One
And my daughter was surprised to find a large red love heart as her first advent calendar item this year. It is red, true, and Christmas is a time for showing love but it really felt like this was better suited for Valentines Day than 1 December… But it is cute and has a star so we’re happy with the start of our advent calendars.
Welcome back elves!
Tinkles the elf arrived in our house this morning, fresh from the North Pole and Santa.
I know some elves have arrived during the week in preparation for today – I guess it is too hard for Santa to magic them all in the same day! – but they are now all on duty. I wonder if kids’ behaviour will suddenly improve 🙂
Anyway, Tinkles arrived, sitting under our newly decorated tree with Santa and a special letter from Santa…
She also seems to have brought some balls with her for the kids to play with! Has an elf arrived in your house, with or without a gift?
Make paper decorations
The year 3 students at our school recently made some Christmas decorations – and I think they are lovely!
I spotted them on a bench outside the classroom and couldn’t resist grabbing some photos before ours arrived home a few days later.
How to make hanging Christmas decorations
You will need:
- one A4 sheet of thin cardboard per decoration (obviously you can use a bigger sheet of cardboard to make lots of these!)
- scissors
- staples (and stapler!)
- decorations – glitter glue, stickers, textas, glitter
- shiny string (or plain string or thin ribbon) for hanging
You then need to cut the cardboard into strips. For each hanging decoration, you will need to cut 7 strips about 5 cm wide based on:
- 2 x full length
- 2 x 2/3 length
- 3 x 1/3 length
{This makes it a good maths activity, too, and will stretch the kids brains as well as building their fine motor skills while having fun and being creative!}
Strips cut for the alternative, wider decoration (see below)
Arrange the strips from biggest to smallest to biggest. That is, make a pile of
- 1 full length
- 1 2/3 length
- 3 1/3 length
- 1 2/3 length
- 1 full length
Make the pile neat, with all strips meeting at one end of the pile. Staple the ends together.
Bend the strips towards each other so all the loose ends line up together, and staple again.
Put a hole in one end and thread string/ribbon through (or just staple on the string or ribbon if you prefer) so the decoration can hang.
Now make it beautiful with textas, stickers and glitter glue.
Alternatively, staple a few decorations together to make a longer decoration, and just add string/ribbon at one end. Or attach some string to two decorations so there is a little room for them to sway independently. 
They can hang on a tree, in a window or from a ceiling. Somewhere that catches an occasional breeze gives a pretty effect.
Many of the children at school chose to use black card so the glitter and stickers stood out more, but I also like the colourful cardboard ones. What will you make – colourful or black?
An alternative is to have 2 1/3 lengths and one 1/6 length to have a decoration that is much wider than it is tall – this is what happened when I followed my kids’ instructions initially!
Dear Santa – Christmas book review
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Dear Santa
by Rod Campbell
Macmillan Children’s books, London, 2004
Age group: 2-4 years
Format: small, soft cover
From the creator of Dear Zoo and It’s mine comes a lift-the-flap Christmas story.
The story
Santa tries to find the perfect gift for our narrator, going through a few ideas first.
My review
Obviously there is a simple plot, being a board book, but there is a happy ending and it all works together nicely!
Dear Santa - more than just a cute lift-the-flap bookClick To TweetThis book has opportunities for children to learn adjectives, such as small and messy, use fine motor skills to open flaps and relate to the story through items they may have or want. I like that it also opens up conversations about what a child wants for Christmas (just as a conversation or maybe as a catalyst in writing a letter to Santa) and a discussion on choosing gifts for others – it is about what they really would appreciate, not what you would like, and that is an important lesson in empathy and emotional intelligence for children.
Pop up window inside Dear Santa
The pictures are clear and colourful, and the book is well made so the flaps should last many openings by little fingers (the card is thick enough they won’t accidentally rip them the first time the book is read, and possibly not even deliberately).
I like that Santa is shown as working hard to find the perfect gift – caring for others takes effort – and am amused that even Santa is finishing his Christmas gifts and wrapping at the last minute! You could say there is a message to kids about not leaving things to the last minute, but I think it is there to relate things to Christmas more directly and to give adults a laugh as they read and reread this book to toddlers!
So do I recommend Dear Santa? Absolutely! This is a beautiful, interactive and fun book for toddlers – and those of us a bit older as well!
Christmas Lindt
Knowing I love Christmas, my husband bought me a box of Christmas Lindt when he was at the shops yesterday which was very sweet (pun not intended, but apt!)
As well as the usual delicious Lindor and dark chocolate balls, the box contained a gingerbread ball and a peppermint cookie ball.
I loved the Lindor and dark balls, of course. The peppermint cookie ball was nice enough but I am not keen on peppermint with chocolate so this was never going to excite me very much – it was Lindt though so smooth and pleasant will do! However, the gingerbread ball was not gingerbread at all to my taste – it was more like the crystallised ginger flavour rather than the subtle spiciness of gingerbread.
So, as much as I love all things Christmas, I think I will stick with the general Lind range rather than their Christmas ball selection.
What do you think of their Christmas balls?
Class Christmas gifts for 2018
We’re ahead of schedule this year and my children have already made their gifts to go their classmates!
This year, we have made Christmas bauble hair ties for the girls and Christmas tree ornaments for the boys. Next we just have to write out all the cards and attach the gifts…
Here are the final results…
Christmas bauble hair ties
A simple craft but hopefully something the girls will appreciate, we made some bauble hair ties. I had some boxes of little Christmas baubles, got some plain hair elastics and a glue gun.
Normally, the kids make these gifts but as they were busy with the ornaments and grandparent presents I started these – and given the hot glue, it was safer anyway.
Using the hot glue gun, I added a dob of glue at the top of each bauble – choosing a point between the join mark on both sides of the bauble holder so there is no line showing in the final result.
It was then a simple act of popping the hair tie into the dob of glue and holding it briefly so the glue sets.
It didn’t take very long to create the entire pile of hair ties, ready to give to the girls in my children’s class.
Christmas tree ornaments
It is a little sexist, but assuming that the boys don’t want a hair tie for Christmas (none of them have long hair anyway!), we made something different for them. I found some simple plaster ornament sets in Kmart so the kids have a lovely afternoon painting the decorations for their teachers and classmates.
The set came with paints and paintbrush so it was an easy set up activity, although we added some of our existing paints on a paint palette as well.
Here is the collection of complete ornaments. I ended up painting some as my daughter lost interest – perhaps you can spot which had my input!
In case you want further ideas, here are some of the gifts we have made in previous years…
Cardboard Christmas tree decorations
Christmas hair ties (similar idea to this year obviously, but they looked quite different)
Advent calendars start this weekend!
Saturday is the 1st of December and that means it is only 5 days until we start our Christmas countdowns!
How are you going to count down the days of December this year? There are many types of advent calendars, including more adult focused ones these days, but here is a sneak peek at the Lego City and Lego Friends calendars for 2018…
And the opened calendars themselves:
Lego Friends countdown 2018
Lego City Advent Countdown
A very pirate Christmas – Christmas book review
A very pirate Christmas
by Timothy Knapman
illustrated by Russell Ayto
Egmont, UK Ltd, United Kingdom, 2015
Age group: 2 to 5 years old
Format: 32 page softcover picture book
Pirates is not usually something I associate with Christmas, but this book puts the two together with humour, rhyme and action.
The story
A crew of scurvy pirates, savage as a stormy sea, did a dreadful thing – they tied poor Father Christmas up and went to get some loot.
My review
My 9 year old read this to me and we both enjoyed it. The story moves along at a nice pace, with rhymes and colourful pictures.
While Santa and the children in the book are definitely humans, the illustrations show the pirates as robots – this is not part of the text so maybe it is just quirky or maybe it makes the book less scary for youngsters worrying about pirates hurting Santa.
I liked that it took the pirates a while to get the hang of flying the sleigh 🙂 But once they did, they stole every Christmas thing and took it back to their pirate ship (luckily it didn’t sink the ship!) for a grand old party.
Shhh, Pip the cabin boy saves the day, freeing Santa and allowing Christmas to be returned to the children of the world before they woke on Christmas morning – so there is a happy ending. The pirates had to return everything – I like that they fixed their own mistake effectively rather than being punished, giving a positive message.
Would I recommend it? Absolutely – A very pirate Christmas is a fun read, Christmassy and gives positive messages. It is a bit different to your average Christmas book and may therefore have more appeal to some adventurous children or those who are a little bored of the same ideas repeated.
A chocolate Christmas igloo!
What on Earth is a chocolate igloo, let alone a Christmas chocolate igloo, you may well ask!
Obviously, it is an igloo made out of chocolate, and decorated for Christmas!
Making an igloo from chocolate…
So a friend came across a Cadbury competition where you needed to create a Christmas house from chocolate. As lovers of both Christmas and chocolate, we couldn’t resist and set a time to create our chocolate house.
As we sat there with our mounds of chocolate (four 350g blocks and a 250g block of chocolate, plus some white chocolate melts and lollies), we had the idea of making an igloo from individual pieces of chocolate instead of just sticking together big blocks. Let’s face it, Santa lives at the North Pole so a Christmas igloo seems reasonable – and slabs of gingerbread to make a house is one thing, but a gingerbread igloo wasn’t going to happen!
Of course, making an igloo took more than the 40 minutes estimated for a Cadbury Christmas house!
We broke blocks of chocolate into pieces then formed the igloo using more chocolate as the mortar. It was our first time building an igloo so we made the first rows a bit too upright (ie we should have started the inwards slant sooner) but it worked out in the end.
We went with a flat roof as we weren’t sure we had enough chocolate left nor confident of our engineering skills to get it to curve the whole way in 🙂 But the flat rood made adding a chimney easier!
Adding decorations was easier – melted white chocolate for snow, cut up snakes to make a wreath, sour straps to make garlands of tinsel, cut up jelly lollies to make lights and some milk bottles to be the penguins at the door. And we mustn’t forget Freddo was inside the chocolate igloo (who else could live inside a chocolate building?)
Why a frog in an igloo?
Ok, there aren’t a lot of frogs roaming around the North Pole waiting for Santa to drop in, but Freddo is made of chocolate and seemed the right resident for the house!
Seeing Freddo inside the igloo, my eight year old decided there was a story behind the frog. She wrote a lovely story about a little frog who ended up at the North Pole and built himself an igloo to live in.
It was also my daughter who thought of the penguins – I was thinking of milk bottles at the front door to suit the old milk deliveries but she saw them as penguins which was a much better idea! A little black icing to make eyes, and Freddo had some company!
Alternative Christmas houses
So, that is our Christmas chocolate igloo – what do you think? It won’t win any architect awards, but I think it is fun and a very good first igloo building attempt! Maybe you can try making a chocolate Christmas igloo – if you do, we’d love to see photos!
What other alternative Christmas houses have you seen or created?
Freddo stuck in his chocolate Christmas igloo in a snow storm!
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