Scratch and Sniff Ornaments

As I expected, my little girls have loved smelling the stickers in The Sweet Smell of Christmas book. I remember doing the same thing when I was a kid. I thought it would be a great idea to mix the scratch-and-sniff idea along with our Names of Jesus advent chain study. So I gathered supplies so that we could make our own scratch-and-sniff Names of Jesus ornaments to put on our tree. I thought this would be a wonderful way to remember all the names of  Jesus we have learned during this month while also being a keepsake.

Supplies:
Names of Jesus ornaments printables from Bible Story Printables
Various flavor packets of Kool-Aid
small containers
paintbrushes
scissors
ribbon

 

Mix each packet of Kool-Aid with 2 TBS of water and stir. Print out your ornaments on cardstock or watercolor paper.

All of my kids---ages 13-3yrs. old enjoyed this project. The Kool-Aid paint works just like watercolors. 

The kids took their time and even experimented with mixing colors. After the pages were dry, we cut them out and tied string through the top to hang on the tree.

They turned out beautifully! When we scratched them, we could get a faint smell. So it doesn't work as well as the scratch-and-sniff stickers, but it was sure fun to paint with Kool-Aid!

What is Christmas?

Today's book is What is Christmas? by Michelle Medlock Adams. I picked up this board book as a way to discuss various Christmas traditions with my young children.

Summary: Using rhyming patterns and colorful illustrations, this book shares various Christmas traditions such as putting up a Christmas tree, seeing Christmas plays, Santa Claus--but are those what Christmas is about? At the end the author shares that all these traditions are fun but Christmas is about the birth of God's only Son.

This is a cute, little book suitable for toddlers and preschoolers. It allows parents to talk discuss with their children the various traditions and that those things are fine, but the real reason we celebrate is because of Jesus.

After we read it, I printed out the shape cut-and-paste Nativity Sheet from 2 Teaching Mommies. She had so much fun doing this activity. We hung it up in the front room for all to see.

This book went perfectly with Why Do We Call it Christmas? DVD from What's In the Bible.You can see a sneak peek below.




I can't believe there's only 8 more days until Christmas! I am enjoying reading these special Christmas books with my kids each day. Which books have been your favorite?

Christmas Cookies

Today's book is Christmas Cookies by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. Though not a traditional Christmas book, this book fits in the season by explaining abstract terms and vocabulary often used during the holidays.

Summary: Who knew that baking cookies could lead to explaining abstract holiday vocabulary? Ms. Rosenthal uses the theme of baking to define words such as anticipation, tradition, disappointed, celebrate, appreciative, and more. Each page is beautifully illustrated and is a wonderful way to introduce new vocabulary to children.

I enjoyed reading this book with my children. It was a wonderful way to talk about concepts such as selfish, thoughtful, gratitude and more. This is not just a book for young kids either. The descriptions paired with the fun illustrations are a great way for children to visualize the word meanings.

"Gratitude means taking a minute to look around the table and be thankful for all the people and all the cookies."

Of course, after reading this book baking cookies is the perfect way to talk about some of the concepts again! :)

My 5yr. old received her great-grandmother's apron for her birthday. We talked about how we can wear our special aprons each year as a tradition.

Lil Sis said she wants to be a chef. So Big Sis helped her make her own batch of Christmas cookies. Lil Sis was appreciative that Big Sis helped her!

They all got to decorate and eat their own sugar cookie too.

Some of the kids also designed their own Christmas Cookies using this Christmas Cookie Coloring Sheet. We would have glued them onto paper plates, but we ran out. So we arranged them onto real plates for now. :)

What's Your Favorite Christmas Cookie?

The Donkey's Christmas Song

Today's book is The Donkey's Christmas Song by Nancy Tafuri.

Summary: A shy, little donkey is afraid that his bray is too loud and will scare the little babe in the manger. All the other animals welcome the little one with their song. Finally the babe looks at the donkey. The donkey lets out his loud song and the baby laughs.

This is a cute rhyming book perfect for toddlers-K. The simple illustrations capture children's attention along with the rhyming text. Each animal makes their "song", which children enjoy saying too (the cow moo's, the dove coo's, etc.)

After reading the story, my little girls went to their Nativity set and had all the animals greet baby Jesus with their song.

I was reminded of one of my favorite childhood Christmas movies while reading this book-- Nestor, the Long-Eared Donkey.

This movie told about Christ's birth in such a simple way, and Nestor always made me a little teary-eyed. I was captivated by the story, the emotion-- and there is just something about the Arthur Rankin Jr. animation that fascinated me as a kid. Do you remember these movies? Please tell me I'm not the only one that old--lol! :) I have this on my to-do list for this Christmas season-- watch Nestor with my kids.

What has been your favorite Christmas book so far this season?

The Birth of Jesus Bible Study

There are so many fun activities and studies to do at this time of the year that it can be a little overwhelming to choose. So for our Christmas studies this year, I've picked easy-to-implement activities that focus on Jesus. We learn a name of Jesus each day via our advent chain, we usually read at least 1 Christian Christmas book each day, and this week we did Grapevine's Birth of Jesus Bible Study together.

There are two versions of The Birth of Jesus Bible study:

Multi Level {ages 7 and up} Birth of Jesus..
Children and teens will travel back to the first century for a fresh look at the events surrounding the birth of Jesus! The timeline of the Nativity will come alive through the Bible study of the characters and events surrounding the birth of Jesus. On this journey students will map the travels of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus.

Beginner {ages 5-7} Birth of Jesus…
Preschool and kindergarten Bible students will saddle up their donkeys and take an unforgettable journey back in time to discover the amazing events that surrounded the Nativity.

I loaded the teacher's guide onto my iPad this time so that I didn't have to print it out. I love that! Everything you need to teach this study is in the teacher's guide. It is so easy to implement. We gathered up our dry erase crayons and table top dry-erase board and started our stick-figure study.

Each child has their own set of colored pencils and their own student pages (this is separate from the teacher's manual). They draw a stick-figure in a certain color to help them remember the key components of the Bible passage.

I give my littlest ones a piece of drawing paper so they can participate with us too. This was my 3yr. old's drawing of Mary.

We enjoy doing these stick-figure studies. Even my older kids enjoy them. It's hard to find things that work well for all the ages I have at home, so I've very grateful for these joint learning opportunities. This is our second Grapevine study (You can read what I thought of The Life of Jospeh Grapevine study) and I'm deciding what our next one will be.

Use the coupon code Advent11 to receive 20% off any non-sale item from now through December 31, 2011!

If you want to win a free study, head on over to:
1+1+1=1 's blog (ends 12/11)
Mama Jenn's blog (ends 12/10)

The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey

The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey is another family favorite. This picture book has a message applicable to all ages. When I read this to my children, all of them ages 3-13 were engaged with the story.

Summary: Mr. Gloomy Toomey as the children called him, was a sad, grouchy man. He was however, the best woodcarver in the valley. A widow hires him to recreate a special manager scene and also asks if her son can watch him carve the set. Creating this creche starts a process of healing for Mr. Toomey. A heartwarming story of healing, kindness and peace that Jesus brings to hurting hearts.
 
There are so many things to talk about after reading this story. The illustrations and the storyline are wonderful. One of the discussions we had while reading this was talking about virtues. The topic came up after reading,

"“Do you every stop talking?” asked the woodcarver… “

And the widow tells her son that the woodcarver has the virtue of silence. In what instances is silence a virtue? What other virtues are displayed in this story? (kindness, patience, being attentive). At this point I realized that our We Choose Virtue Cards would come in handy. I pulled them out and we went over what being kind, patient, and attentive meant.

I also found some wooden animals in my craft stash. We read the descriptions in the book again and talked about how hard it might be to create figures out of wood. For a fun activity, have your children try to recreate the animals using clay or PlayDough based on the descriptions in the story.

The First Christmas

Today's book is The First Christmas by John Wilkie illustrated by Jodie McCallum. This is an iPad app book by PicPocket Books.

Summary: Written from the perspective of Mary's donkey, the rhyming text tells about Christ's birth. It starts on the journey Mary and Joseph had to take to Bethlehem and ends with the visit from the Magi.

This is the first book I've downloaded from PicPocket Books. I loved that it told the story of the birth of Jesus and I thought the illustrations were adorable. We have another book that is illustrated by Jodie McCallum (which we will be sharing later.)

The book is narrated by a young girl, and while she reads, the word she is saying turns to red. I like this feature for it helps beginning readers "read" along with the story. If you touch the animals in the story you can hear them make noises.

 

For a book extension activity, I pulled out the Nativity cards I printed from 1+1+1=1 last year. Once again we read the story and then matched our little people animals to the cards. My 3yr. old and 5 yr. old had fun trying to teach my 1 yr. old the animal sounds.

The Berenstain Bears Trim the Tree

Today's Book is The Berenstain Bears Trim the Tree by Mike and Jan Berenstain. We read this book on our iPad but you can also purchase a traditional copy.

Summary: A cute lift-the-flap book perfect for toddlers and preschoolers. The Berenstain Bears work together to decorate their Christmas tree.

The traditional book and the Trim the Tree iPad app from Oceanhouse Media both have lift-the-flap features! What I like about the ipad app is that it has three different modes to choose: Read to Me, Read it Myself, and Auto Play. For my little girls, I use this like a listening center. They can listen to the book on their own--which they did multiple times.

To promote reading in young children, individual words are highlighted as the story is read and words zoom up when pictures are touched. You can see in the picture above that she just lifted the flap to reveal a kitten, and when she touched the kitten, the word appeared. The narrator also says the word name too.

Since the book was all about Christmas tree decorations, I thought it would be a perfect time to work on our tradition of decorating wooden photo ornaments. Each child does one each year to hang on our tree. I usually have my younger kids use markers to decorate the ornaments since they usually create less of a mess this way and have more control over where the color goes.

I love looking at the photo ornaments each year, seeing how each child has grown up in just a year's time.

Do you have any Christmas ornament traditions?

Click to see more Christmas books

Christmas in the Manger

I just think the illustrations in Christmas in the Manger are too cute! This sturdy and cute board book is perfect for babies through preschool and was our book of the day.

Summary: The simple, rhyming text and cute illustrations are a perfect way to share the Christmas story with very young children. First the animal are introduced, then the shepherds, wise men, Mary and Jesus.

I don't plan on doing crafts for every single book we read this season, but if I have an idea, I go with it. I was inspired by the illustrations in this book and had so much fun coming up with a craft. The characters were simple yet cute. So I looked around my house and found some simple objects to use for our craft.

"I am the baby
asleep in the hay,
and I am the reason
for Christmas Day."
~Nola Buck

Isn't this the cutest Bottle Cap Baby Jesus? I have complete step-by-step instructions over at The Homeschool Village today. :)

Today is the last day of our group 5 Days of Christmas series. I hope you have had some time to visit all the blogs and see their awesome Christmas posts!  Well we would love to see your favorite Christmas craft, activity, or other Christmas-related post too! Pick your favorite one, add a link back here so others know where to join in, and share!


Please stop by and visiting my other 5 Days of Christmas friends!

A Slob Comes Clean - Getting Your Home Company Ready
Feels Like Home - Christmas Traditions
Somewhat Crunchy - Christmas with Dairy Allergies
Spell Outloud - Children's Books
Mama's Learning Corner - Children's Crafts
Many Little Blessings - Edible Gifts
Sunflower Schoolhouse - Decorations
An Oregon Cottage - Christmas Cookies
Catholic Icing - Wishing Jesus Happy Birthday
The Traveling Praters - Traveling
The Homeschool Classroom - Gifts Kids Can Make
Mama's Laundry Talk - Laundry Gifts

*P.S. Even though this is the end of the 5 Day series, I will continue to "try" to post a book a day during the month of December! I've also added a Christmas Book page to help keep everything organized.

A Christmas Prayer: Christmas Book

Today's book is A Christmas Prayer by Amy Parker. This is a Christmas book perfect for your littlest ones.

Summary: A little child talks about how every aspect of the nativity story is a gift from God.  From Gabriel to baby Jesus, they are each a precious Christmas gift to us from God.

The book has simple text with the repeating phrase, "Thank you, God, for __________ Your precious Christmas gift". My little ones were able to repeat that phrase after a couple of pages. I appreciated that this book allowed us to talk about how each of the characters in our nativity set were real and each were a gift from God that helped tell the story of the best gift of all-- Jesus.

After reading this book we pulled out our Nativity Sensory Box that we made last year. As the girls searched for the pieces, we reviewed what the book said about that person.

"Thank You, God, for Jesus,

Your one and only Son.

A Savior sent to save the world!

Yes, Christmas had begun!" 

~Amy Parker

Other posts in this series:

5 Days of Christmas Books: Day 1 - My Favorite Childhood Book
5 Days of Christmas Books: Day 2 - The Christmas Book Book
5 Days of Christmas Books Day 3 - The Song of the Stars
5 Days of Christmas Books Day 4 - Humphrey's First Christmas

Please stop by and visiting my other 5 Days of Christmas friends!

A Slob Comes Clean - Getting Your Home Company Ready
Feels Like Home - Christmas Traditions
Somewhat Crunchy - Christmas with Dairy Allergies
Spell Outloud - Children's Books
Mama's Learning Corner - Children's Crafts
Many Little Blessings - Edible Gifts
Sunflower Schoolhouse - Decorations
An Oregon Cottage - Christmas Cookies
Catholic Icing - Wishing Jesus Happy Birthday
The Traveling Praters - Traveling
The Homeschool Classroom - Gifts Kids Can Make
Mama's Laundry Talk - Laundry Gifts

Christmas Book Book

Yesterday I mentioned how I worked on a new Christmas book system for my family to use this year. I liked the surprise element of wrapping books, but I don't like to wrap. I also have a hard time doing a specific activity for 25 days straight. Some days we like to read through 3 books, and other days none at all. I also wanted to incorporate iPad book reading and listening into our Christmas book tradition. That's hard to wrap under a tree. So I came up with a Christmas Book book (I couldn't think of another name to call it at 1:00 am.)

 

I'm hoping that this little book will become a fun Christmas book tradition. Would you like to see how I made it and plan to use it?

Supplies:

4x6 photo album (one of those cheap, plastic ones at the Dollar Store work)

decorative paper

ribbons

stapler
adhesive
stickers or stamps

Pick coordinating scrapbook paper and trim to 4x6. I went ahead and made enough for 25 days, but with this system you can do more or less.

 

Number and decorate the pages and then slip into the photo album. I decided to do a green and red pattern.

The next step was probably the hardest. If you noticed in my supply picture above, my little photo album was purple flowers. That's not very Christmas-y. This particular photo album also did not have a way to slip in a new piece of paper for the cover. Since it is plastic, finding an adhesive that wouldn't peel off made covering it with paper a hassel. So what I did was carefully use an Exacto-knife to open up the top-inside cover of the album. I used a metal ruler to guide the cut along the inside seam. I would have taken a picture but I couldn't figure out how to hold the knife and shoot the camera at the same time. :) Once I did that, I was able to pull out the purple cardboard cover. I glued scrapbook paper onto that and then inserted it back into the album. I did the same for the back of the album too.

Then using my favorite photo-editing program, I created another 4x6 insert with all the Christmas book titles. I know what you're thinking--wrapping the books would have been easier. I see your point, but I'm hoping that this will last a couple of years!

Once I was done with the book inserts, I slipped them randomly behind the numbers.

So How Does This Work?
You can structure it two different ways. To act like a Christmas-countdown calendar, or to act like a Christmas book collection counter. I chose the latter for this year.

During the month of December, for our read-aloud time, one child will pick a tag from behind the number. They'll see the book cover image and go pick that book out of the book basket to read. If we want to read more than one, then the next child will pull the tag out from page number 2 etc. After we are done reading, we will put the books we read on display in the front room. Then we will write the date we read the book on the back of the book tag. If we happened to add an activity to go along with the book, we'll write that info. too. Then we will place the tag in front of the number in the Christmas book so we know where we left off.


I created a tag for some stories I want my kids to listen to from Tales to Go Christmas Edition and other story radio sources. I know that I will probably be adding an iPad book or two as well. I am hoping that this will let my kids have some element of surprise and will be a good way to record some memories of the books we read (or listened to) together by jotting down little tid-bits on the back of the book cards. I'm looking forward to trying this out in a couple of days!

If you are interested in doing a version of this Christmas Book Book, you can download blank 4x6 book inserts. You can either write the name of the book or add the photos yourself to match your book collection.

Please stop by and visiting my other 5 Days of Christmas friends!

A Slob Comes Clean - Getting Your Home  Company Ready
Feels Like Home - Christmas Traditions
Somewhat Crunchy - Christmas with Dairy  Allergies
Spell Outloud - Children's Books
Mama's  Learning Corner - Children's Crafts
Many Little  Blessings - Edible Gifts
Sunflower  Schoolhouse - Decorations
An Oregon Cottage - Christmas Cookies
Catholic Icing - Wishing Jesus Happy  Birthday
The  Traveling Praters - Traveling
The Homeschool Classroom - Gifts Kids Can  Make
Mama's  Laundry Talk - Laundry Gifts