Third week advent calendar activities

We had a great week of advent calendar activities!

Day 13

"make gingerbread cookies"

We took these to L's sing along at her school.

 Day 14

"Make raping paper"

I used a simple spelling on the little card so L could read it herself.  A simple idea of just painting the edges of the cookie cutters with acrylic paint.  We used this to wrap her teachers gifts.

 Day 15

"Get Christmas books from the library"

We got two cracking books. One called The Gift of Christmas which is about the experience of Christmas through all of the senses with beautiful pictures.  The other is a super I Spy Merry Christmas book also with amazing pictures.

Day 16

"Make reindeer food"

I found the "recipe" for this magic reindeer food here.

It was a great practical life activity.  We used layers of oatmeal, green and red sprinkles(which my mom had left over from when I was a kid!!)and white sugar.  L was adamant that the sugar was salt because sugar is brown not white!  I realised she's never seen white sugar before!!!

 The card says

Sprinkle on your lawn at night,

The moon will make it sparkle bright

As Santa's reindeer fly and roam,

This will guide them to your home.

The tricky bit will be trying to convince L she only needs to sprinkle a tiny bit and not the whole jar!!

 Day 17

"Look under the bed"

Day 18

"Make Christmas fairies"

We made these cute little fairies using coffee filters.  L has a story about a Christmas fairy in one of her Christmas books so she loved doing this.  They stayed on the tree only long enough for the picture to be taken and then after making one for Granny they were all flying around the house to the music from The Nutcracker Suite.  We turned off all of the lights and just had the twinkling Christmas lights.  It was magical.

 It's funny how great experiences just happen.  I'd planned on these only being Christmas ornaments but we had a blast flying them all around and playing with them.  I even found a wonderful Fairy song to play on the Penny Whistle!
(Since posting this I found some tiny glow sticks and taped them inside the fairies.  They almost came alive as they glowed dancing through the air.  We are going to make them again in the summer to dance at night in the garden!)

 Day 19

"Decorate the Christmas cake"

We've had these decorations since I was a girl as well as the time honored tradition of putting chocolate sprinkles after the reindeer.  My parents ended up having to get another one after my sister and I had had one too many fights over who got to do the "poo" honor!

This was L's first year and it was wonderful to be able to pass on the tradition!