White Christmas

To kick off the first week in December, why not talk about SNOW! Adapt this to the age of your child. With my four year old, we talked about how no two snowflakes are the same and that when magnified they make beautiful patterns. If your child can use scissors he will love cutting away making snowflakes.

We kept things light and simple by reading snowman related books. After which we made a picture of a snow man glittered with salt.

Variation: If your child is too young for scissors you can make the paper snowflake, cover with a thin coat of glue, and have your child sprinkle it with salt. Using a cardboard box top can help contain the mess.

Rice Crispy Turkeys

To make these cute edible turkeys, mix up a batch of chocolate Rice Krispy treats. Grease your hands with vegetable spray and form the the Krispies into balls. Using the end of a spoon, make holes for the candy to be placed in the body. For the snood (the red thing on the turkey's beak) try a red Mike & Ike cut in half or even cut a gum drop in half. Candy corn for the beak is a fun choice-perfect size and color.Then add the feathers. Tons of possibilities for this! Try toothpicks, marshmallows, cereal, gumdrops, etc. and then use mini M&M's for the eyes. These sweet turkeys could even be saved for a fun table decoration on Thanksgiving day to be eaten as part of dessert-so fun!

Courtesy of www.alphamom.com

Leaf Art

Spend the day talking about seasons and leaves!! Start out by reading I Am A Leaf by Jean Marzollo. This is a great little book that takes you on the journey of a leaf through four seasons. (Note: it does talk about chlorophyll but when we read that part my 3 year old didn't ask, so I didn't worry about it). Then show pictures trees in all four seasons, and discuss how each season is different and how it affects the trees.

Finally, take your little one(s) outside and collect leaves of different shapes and colors. You can do green leaves for summer, colored leaves for fall, and blossoms and green leaves for spring. Winter is tricky.... :)

Take your leaves inside and flatten them with a heavy object. Then arrange the leaves onto white or colored paper and glue them on. You can also do leaf rubbings with crayons!

Get Creative with Leaves!

Paper Bag Costumes

Next time you are checking out at the
grocery store say paper instead of plastic!

So I KNOW Halloween is over but it is still fun to dress up any time of the year!

We talked about the first Thanksgiving today and made some Native American costumes out of brown paper grocery sacks. I cut a hole at the top for the neck and two arm holes on the side to create a "tunic" for my son to decorate with crayons. I am sure you could get more elaborate with painting it and gluing embellishments on it but we went for simple today. I then used another paper sack to make a head band. I drew feathers on colored construction paper and had my son practice fine motor skills by cutting the feathers out. We taped them to the head band and then taped it around his head. This could easily be done as a pilgrim costume instead.

I am sure you could use this paper sack costume for a multitude of different costumes so get creative and comment on our activity corner blog when this activity gets posted on there in two weeks. We would love to see what you have come up with!