It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

We have been so busy here!  The month started with each child decorating their very own advent calenders. The calendars are very simple, but every morning we get to glue another picture on today's date, and when we run out of pictures, we know it's finally Christmas Eve!  I actually stressed out about how to do advent calenders this year...  I'm glad I kept it very simple. The kids don't mind - they still love discovering pictures in their own little envelopes every day and deciding which one to glue on this time. :)  I wish I had a picture of these easy calendars for you, but I don't!  Oops.

We've also been busy making wreaths, snowflakes, snowmen, tree ornaments, and even a cotton-ball bearded Santa!  Today, was the busiest and most fun we've had all month, though - we spent the entire morning in the kitchen.

Morning snack was Reindeer Bread!  Check out these fun pictures. :)

After snack, we got busy with holiday treats for other people.  We started with the treats we're making for moms and dads this year.  Now, I know it's not right that I'm about to spoil the surprise... truth is, I've never been good at surprises anyway - especially when it comes to gift giving. :) Just ask my husband - we usually have whatever gift we bought each other long before Christmas is here.  I stink at holding out! So - if you want to be surprised, I guess you should just stop reading now and ignore the adorable and fun pictures below...



Here are the M&M treats we made this morning:












Kudos to my friend Judy who got the idea from another blogger.  What a perfect treat to make with these kids!  They really enjoyed laying out the pretzel squares, and of course they were super helpers when it came to unwrapping all those kisses.  By the time we were half done with the tedious job of squishing those M&M's down, the kids got tired so they scurried off to wash hands and go play while I did the rest. (Shhh, I'm totally okay with that!!) :)   Anyway - what a fun project it was.

Don't tell the kids, but they did a lot of learning during this too.  They used their small motor skills to get those Hershey wrappers off (muscles we need, to improve cutting with scissors and writing with pencils), and they had to use their cognitive thinking to decide what comes next (first the pretzels then the kisses) and of course they had match one-to-one. Let's not forget the task of working together. I had them work in pairs. (We missed Noah and Caleb today! They went to spend time with Nana...)  There's a lot of other lessons that went into this, too - like social skills and science discovery.

 

After the treats were made and the kids got some playing out of their systems, we got busy with old fashioned cookie cutter cookies. :)  This was SO MUCH FUN.   I'm so proud of how well we all worked together. In pairs (we made two batches), they took turns adding ingredients to a big bowl, then stirring, and kneading. (I should have snapped a picture of them stirring!)

Then, they shared their favorite cutter shapes with one another and they waited patiently as I scooped the shapes with my spatula to put them on the baking pan.  This task included pre-math skills as we had to figure out how many shapes we could fit into the dough before rolling up the used dough to start over again.














This afternoon, the plan is to ice and decorate these cookies. I love the holidays!!

(P.S. Thank God for naptime!)