Tag Archive | ornaments

Gingerbread Men

December 17-18

What can be better on a Monday than videos… and one of them a CRAFT video? My loyal fellow crafter Gavin and I were right on top of that! I like this project as it gave him a start at braiding with something that holds the shape. He got a little frustrated but did a GREAT job! And the supplies – pipe cleaners, SIMPLE! then I folded two he twisted together to make our bow and attach it and BANG tree ornament and proud crafter!

My crafting buddy

Our second video was a Trinity favourite and I think another that Activity Village (both of our videos are from the site) posted LAST year. It really is short but soooo cute!

Gavin continued his artistic trend with the newest Art for Kids instructions – BABY JESUS! Absolutely ADORABLE!

A beautiful Baby Jesus with artist (Gavin)

The close up

Trinity and Emanuel channeled some artistic talent as they worked on what we are calling our “gingerbread house” since we started our gingerbread man unit with the traditional story and some workbooks. We figured foam would be easier (though this kit not much!).

Working on the house

With gingerbread men comes many many printable pictures… Trinity was all over that!

Colour by numbers thanks to Activity Village – link on right for the site

We also read the boardbook we have for gingerbread men… coloured our Advent stuff, worked on finishing any unfinished previous week sheets and of course practiced our songs. I am hoping to do up the video by Friday and post it on youTube!

The Gingerbread Man

I had a special evening OUT of the house. We had all miss remembered Joe and Faith’s flight return (thinking it Tuesday when it was Monday) so Nana and Baba and cousins headed to the airport after I left leaving Ken solo. But yours truly was out for the evening with Shandai (a besty from my high school days in Canada) and her roommate Emily. Both of them are SUPER crafty ladies and an inspiration.

We went to Applebee’s for dinner (thanks again Shandai) and the 5.00 burger and sat and chatted forever. Then we went to JoAnn’s and shopped for ages, just trolling the aisles talking craft and seeing what there is to see. I picked up some super soft purple yarn for a special project and since I had coupons got a couple dollar Christmas items for the kids to craft with and TRACING paper for a project for later this week.

New yarn!!

Poor Ken finally succumbed to the cold that has been kicking ALL our bottoms on Tuesday. Sore throat, sore body, you name it… so our errands consisted of the two of us heading out late afternoon with Ken driving and me doing the rest. I think I am finally done sending what packages I can before Christmas. Oh and a run to Target to ALMOST finish the random items. I REALLY need to find that Christmas dress for Echo…

So much to do we are tired out!

I had that new package of pipe cleaners so Gavin and I created wreaths of many shiny colours. I love the braiding practice. Gavin even got EXTRA fancy with his bow piece!

More wreaths

The tracing paper has come in handy AGAIN… a method learned from their cousin Gabriella of tracing pictures is VERY popular around here. Gavin decided to go with a page out of our Christmas colouring book. With the Pringles I picked up at Target we can make our pin hole cameras this week as well… Probably by Thursday since we still have a tube to eat.

Tracing paper!

The gingerbread men pages continue as does our book reading. We had an advanced copy of the Christmas themed Scaredy Squirrel book – Scaredy Squirrel Prepares for Christmas… you can find our family review HERE. We absolutely adore this series and are so blessed to have a signed copy of one of the books thanks to Karyn. Our binder is filling up.

Hard at work

Starting our December Right

December 3-4

I loved the longer video on the Activity Village site… we had over 20 min of happy and quiet kids! But, watch for yourself!

We started our first themed week Monday… CANDY CANES! I combined a lapbook I got for free and as many Candy Cane themed print outs as I could find… mostly on Activity Village. Trinity was overjoyed with the chance to colour any and all candy cane images. And the boys listened to their educational story about the origins of Candy Canes before they filled out a short worksheet. The plan is to take TUESDAY to make the candy cane crafts I found online.

With out countdown… also Activity Village

What we DID do was start on our Christmas ornaments. I am afraid a lot of stuff is going to make it to people late this year due to shipping costs but the kids are making special foam ornaments for everyone. We took the kit I bought with the littles on Saturday and combined it with our foam and glitter glue and let them go NUTS!

Completed with pictures

There are so many ways to represent Santa. The kids thought the Art for Kids site had one of the best ideas yet! Such a goofy Santa how to! 

Zander’s running Santa

Tuesday was a bit of a shattered day… I honestly have no excuse but to admit that I let the worries and lack of knowledge in regards to my need to change my status here in the US catch up with me. I despise it when I do that, I feel that I fail the kids when I let the outside world destroy the organization, learning and… fun of our homeschool day. With Ken not employed and our living here with Nana and Baba homeschooling is really insular for us. It is the rest of the time that is friends and extended family, errands and free events. Right now, right here we don’t have the homeschool connections so I have created a plan around our space here. But anyway… Advent is here and we are embracing each day with crafts and family together time. So though I WANT Ken employed and out busy, I am so happy with this special time we have.

We had a special how to on Art for Kids on Tuesday… a FAIRY! So Gavin was sweet enough to draw one for Trinity! We do get a little out of order on the updated instructions from time to time, but Gavin had some spare time so he was such a sweetheart and drew it up. 

For Trinity

We had picked up some great Christmas colour themed pipe cleaners from Joann’s previously so Trinity and Echo and Gavin all made special twisted candy canes. You can find our instructions HERE on the Activity Village site. 

Echo and her Candy Cane in TRINITY’s nightgown!

Gavin’s more complicated version

As a “T” day, of course we had to have some Minecraft time! 

Designing a masterpiece

We made CANDY with Nana from a simple candy cane recipe and while they did not exactly hold shape or harden (we hope for better results next time) ALL of the kids got involved and had a blast.

Measuring the sugar

Pulling the sugar

Lots of busy, sticky fingers

The shape did not hold but was it ever FUN

We are really loving a themed week… though I am sure we could cram more stuff into a day, this pace seems to have the boys retaining TONS. And giving us time to make those special gifts for godparents, cards for people back up in Canada and of course Art for Kids how to drawings. 

Echo and her own little piece of Candy Cane to work

The 1st Day of Advent

As we continue to attempt to declutter, organize and progress as a family I find myself often debating what to keep… do you keep every paper and piece of art? Choose the best of the bunch? Go random? Well, when I think about it… this blog IS my memory book. Every day I write down the mundane, the whimsical, educational, emotional… all the milestones are here, the art, the interest, the quirks and more… do you think my children will look back at some copy of this and sigh? Or maybe reminisce? More likely, with my bunch, they will shake their heads and wonder at the time mommy spent on this site… the insane focus on each and every step, the massive amount of photography… But I bet they WILL look back and I can say SEE you did this!! Now WHY am I thinking about this? Well on top of the above reasons I got an email last night that deals with keeping memories. You can check out the blog entry on the Confessions of a Homeschooler blog. She has a great free download for dealing with all the wonderful things you have around created by your children. For a schooling OR homeschooling family. 

Speaking (er typing) of milestones, today Echo did TWO shuffling steps! YAY! She was VERY unimpressed by it, would rather I had just swooped down and picked her up… BUT she did it! The twins were right there and saw it, I caught it out of the corner of my eye… and were very congratulatory. What wonderful big brothers she has. 

Standing on her own

Advent has begun here in the Reinsch-Johnson residence and we actually have quite a bit to do each day. We start with our regular calendar and a discussion about the day, then there is the I’ve been good chart that Santa WILL see, they have been told! After that our Perler Bead Advent countdown calendar that we add a shape to and then count the days left. Whew! And then this year the boys brought some items home from church. A little Advent calendar that you flip up a flap for each day and it has a verse and a book… a finding object book with a bit of the Bible to read each day. Today’s reading was Genesis 3, 1-7 about the apple. You then looked at the picture, found the apple and talked about trees and fruit and such. 

Some of the learning fun

But there’s more… today marks the beginning of Activity Villages’s Advent Calendar as well! This is a favourite of ours as it is daily and last year had us end up with 100 new ornaments! This year you make your own village! Most of the kids have opted to string their houses up but Zander is doing the table version. Added to that they have activities and such for each day too. Today was a focus on stockings. Emanuel did the colour by numbers to go with it! I love the series, especially with the time difference as I can access the next day early and get my print outs done and supplies organized early! I can’t wait to see our villages unfold!

Colouring their houses

And the final portion of our Advent season – this is for the twins really – our Polar Express lapbook. Today we did the first two mini books, read the story again (a first time for the little ones to sit through) and folded our folders so we can start piecing it together as we go. Our lapbook is from www.ajourneythroughlearning.com. When I checked their site briefly I was not able to find the exact one we used but if you search on Currclick there are a few options connected to the book. Once we finish the lapbook we will watch the movie again. It really is a very good rendition. 

Gavin has decided HE wants to sew some gifts as well. I am keeping one of his personal designs but after that am giving him free reign to gift out. Right now he is working on a UK pattern (they are great as they don’t use half stitches). It is a joke card and very cute. He has a lot of patience for this and persists even when he gets knots and stabs his finger. 

Hard at work

Zander has opted NOT to sew, instead he focused on time with Echo (he is my sheet holder when I attempt pictures), fun with Lego and he was the first one out the door this afternoon to build a snowman. His exuberance did finally convince Gavin it was a good idea and they BOTH built snowmen… all I have for today is the works in progress but they went for the REAL deal… rocks for eyes and mouths and a carrot for the nose!

Well on its way

Work in progress

Emanuel was my indoors boy with his workbook excitement and a mini craft… We couldn’t find my 3 sided beads (I have them in holiday colours darnit!! But I will find everything in the end… I am down to my last closet to organize). What we did find was a bunch of Christmas ornament craft supply my friend Kathy gifted us a year or two ago. With some pipecleaners, imagination and careful creation of patterns Emanuel was the proud creator of TWO beaded candy canes. The blue and green one (not pictured) was VERY short and chunky but we managed. I am sure AFTER Christmas is over I will find my bead stash!

Traditional Candy Cane

In order to get in a bath I needed 5 min to myself so I dug out my surplus stickers and embellishments, got everyone a piece of paper folded into a card, had the boys help the little ones and snuck off. We ended up with 4 very different Christmas cards (including two pinks!). I just have to add in our moo cards to each one going to someone and check them off my list. Slow going as I am trying to keep organized but it is going! Last night I finished TWO gifts and crossed off some more people. I hope to do the same with a US package. 

Completed cards

I received some mail today! I ordered some blue hair extensions off of eBay and they finally got here today. I will have to play around with them and trim them down to size but I am so excited! I wanted to dye my hair blue but have heard some real horror stories so this is the next best thing! AND they were under 3.00 for all 3!

Hair things

So with snowmen, Advent calendars, talk about trains, sewing and all the other random occurrences we seem to have kept busy! I wouldn’t say the time has flown by but I blinked and it was past 3pm! Yikes! Take a look at THIS Lego creation! The boys now want that many Legos too! 

And the crafting goes on… for me as well. BUT I did manage some time in between crafts to clean up my ribbons (the kids dumped one container and the other container was a mess by my own work). Now the kitchen table… well… yeah let’s just ignore that one for now! I know I have! That leaves my laminating to trim up, a house to “assemble” for Zander…and of course a hunt for something for Trinity to “do” tomorrow… 

Echo's embellished pj's

Baby with her cube

This entry was posted on 01/12/2011, in Uncategorized. 2 Comments