Advent Calendar For Young Kids 2013

We had so much fun with out Advent Calendar last year as the girls were old enough to really get into it and enjoy the activities! You can check out last years post here: Advent Calendar 2012

I'm really looking forward to continuing this tradition with them this year!

Just like I posted last year we try to keep it simple by combining fun family events with simple activities and even include ways to give back during the holiday season.

Although our list is very similar to last years I thought I would share it anyway as it does include a few new items. As stated last year most of the new items on the list (new ornament,  new coloring book etc.) were purchased at the dollar aisle or The Dollar Store.

1. Hot Coco Bar and put up the tree
2. Buy toys for Wish Tree Gift (Gifts to help needy children in the community)
3. Read A New Christmas Story
4. Write A Letter To Santa
5. Pick toys out of our own collection to donate
6. See Santa at The Mall
7. Cookies with Santa at our church
8. Go on a sleigh ride (neighborhood holiday party)
9. Santa chocolate treat
10. Decorate Foam Snowmen ($1 aisle at Target)
11. New Christmas Ornament to put on tree
12. Donate to Wings ( local shelter for women and children)
13. Family Christmas Movie Night
14. New candy cane to put on tree
15. Go see The Zoo lights
16. Read Christmas Stories in front of the tree
17. New Christmas coloring book
18. Go see Christmas lights in our PJ's while listening to Xmas music
19. Make ornaments for family gifts
20. Make Gingerbread House
21. Read The Christmas Story and Christmas song family sing along with guitars
22. Decorate Christmas Cookie Party
23. Hot Coco with Mrs. Claus
24. Open 1 present (new pj's) and sprinkle reindeer food
25. Merry Christmas (chocolate treat)

What's on your Advent Calendar? Anything your family enjoys that I missed?

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Thanksgiving Placemat For Kids To Make

When I hosted Thanksgiving dinner a couple of years ago I had so much fun coming up with ways to decorate the kids table.  Here's a simple way to get the kids involved in personalizing their very own spot at the table. Have them make their own Thanksgiving placemats!

All you need are oil pastels (crayons or markers will work too), orange construction paper, printed out sheets of paper that say We Give Thanks, glue, Thanksgiving stickers and contact paper.

I played around with my various fonts on the computer and chose a bold puffy font to type the words We Give Thanks. You want something that is fairly chunky so the kids have space to color it in.

The girls glued on the We Give Thanks paper to the orange construction paper and then using fall colored oil pastels they colored in the words. I used oil pastels because they tend to be a bit brighter but crayons or markers will work too.

We had been talking about what it means to be thankful and grateful so we continued our discussion of what it means to give thanks.

After they were done coloring in the words I gave them some foam Thanksgiving stickers and they decorated along the sides of the paper with them. On a side note peeling off the backs of the foam stickers is great fine motor skill practice!

Once they were done decorating we covered the placemat with contact paper and then they were complete and ready to be displayed!

This is a perfectly simple activity for the kids to do to prepare for Thanksgiving! You could even have the materials ready and use this as a little project for your guest children to do on Thanksgiving day!

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