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Thank you to my December self for choosing a simple activity for Monday morning, on the week before Christmas.
The elf arrived in the morning with a basket of snowballs and a sign challenging them to a snowball fight.
When my kids were a little younger, I used to stuff a few of these snowballs in their stockings to help fill them up. As a result, we’ve amassed a small collection. Just enough so the kids could burn off a bit of energy this morning with a snowball fight.
After a very long day yesterday, we are happy to spend this Sunday at home. Today’s activity is to bake some Christmas cookies. I intentionally planned to bake on a weekend so we would have lots of time to make a mess and then clean up after. The luxury of extra times makes the mess less stressful for me.
The elf kicked things off with some baking themed mischief this morning.
I definitely could have made this scene more elaborate, but after a full day of solo parenting yesterday (my husband was super sick), this was all I could muster last night.
We made some easy shortbread cookies with a recipe passed down to me from my mom’s friend (see below if you’re interested in the recipe). The kids had fun cutting out the shapes and trying to get them onto the pan. My 3 year old participated for about 5 minutes and my 5 year old for 10 minutes, so I was pleasantly surprised that it was a fairly quick activity. I think sticking with an easy recipe was a good choice for us. We can get more fancy as the kids get older and have more experience with baking.
Recipe for Janet’s Shortbread
Combine and cream butter and sugar. Add 2 cups of flour and mix. Add remaining 1/2 cup of flour only to the point needed (I usually only use 1.5 tbsp).
Roll out 1/4″ and cut out. Place on greased cookie sheet.
Bake at 325 degrees F for 20 minutes (or until slightly brown).
It’s the weekend and that means we have out-of-the-house activities to do today. The kids have their last horseback riding lesson of the year in the morning and, in the afternoon, they will be going to their grandparents’ condo for a festive movie and treats in the building’s movie theatre.
The elf was watching his watching his own movie in the dollhouse this morning and even managed to find some popcorn. My daughter thought this was hilarious.
It’s Gingerbread Day! I’ve been looking forward to this one. My daughter has been talking about making a gingerbread house since the start of December. We will make our real gingerbread house tonight after school, but to help get us in the gingerbread mood (in a less messy way), I had a special surprise for the kids this morning. I made some handmade gingerbread blocks. I think they turned out so adorable, so I was really excited for the kids to discover them this morning.
If you’re interested in how I made them, you can read about it here.
The elf was hanging out with the new blocks, plus a few other handmade goodies (not by me) that I just received from the second-hand toy store Wonder + Kind (Little Step Co. stackers and Island Peg Doll pegs and houses).
Let the building begin!
The kids loved the painting chocolate kit from Costco last year and for some reason, I had an extra one (I probably thought one box between 2 kids was tons of chocolate). So, the chocolate painting activity is coming out again this year.
My daughter has a dance recital tonight and I wanted an extra easy activity for the day. I try to organize the activities so the easier to prep, less messy, less time consuming activities are during the week when we’re busy with school and after-school activities.
Following along with today’s chocolate theme, the elf got into the chocolate stash last night and had a little party on his own. The kids thought this was pretty funny.
Last December, when I was rotating the kids’ toys and looking for our most festive and Christmas themed items, I realized that we didn’t have any holiday puzzles. I found a couple on sale at Book Outlet after Christmas last year and put them away for this season. By the way, Book Outlet is a great place to get bargains on books, puzzles and activities. I’m not affiliated, I just find it’s a great, inexpensive place to find holiday related items to add to our rotation.
So, all to say, the elf (the kids say he’s an elf) brought a couple new holiday puzzles this year.
The adorable little sign and mini puzzle is from Eye Spy Club. I love Meaghan’s stuff, it’s all hand-drawn and always has a unique twist. The mini puzzle was probably my daughter’s favourite of the three. A nice, easy and mess-free activity for a busy weekday. Let the puzzles begin!
Day 12 we will be playing with playdough. The elf dug out all of our Christmas play dough tools and accessories this morning.
Everything is from previous years, but the kids were excited to explore it all because they haven’t seen it since last year. Some of our play dough is getting a bit brittle so I made some fresh peppermint swirl playdough.
I’m on a mission to find the softest, squishiest playdough. This time I tried a new recipe from https://teachingmama.org/super-soft-playdough-recipe/. This recipe uses baby powder instead of corn starch and I did find it made very soft dough, even though I had to substitute coconut oil for baby oil. My only complaint is that despite adding peppermint extract to the dough, I could still smell the baby powder. I don’t love the smell of baby powder, so I will continue the search.
Today’s activity is to make a donation. My daughter’s school organized a food and personal hygiene goods collection, so she took some things this morning to contribute.
I thought it would be fun to do something funny with the elf/ pixy in the morning. I set him up to have a garage sale with a few of the kids’ toys.
Unfortunately, my son did not wake up in a good mood and was not impressed to see all his toys in a pile on the counter. I explained that the elf was making a joke and trying to play a game. After my son woke up more and his mood improved, he thought the little scene was more amusing. I think because my kids are still so young and can’t read, they prefer the simple elf scenes.
We started the day off with a little pixy mischief. He was zip lining from the kitchen over to the Maileg Christmas Chalet.
My husband was down with the sickness today, so the kids, their grandparents and I went to Stanley’s Christmas Village. The weather was not the best, but we toughed it out – taking a tractor ride to a magical Christmas Village, seeing farm animals and visiting Santa. It was too cold and wet to take the kids snowsuits off and take a pretty Santa photo, but the kids managed to have fun in some difficult conditions – so I take that as a win.
This morning, the elf got up to some more (easy) antics. He showed up in the Christmas tree with two new ornaments. Once again, the kids were pretty interested in how he got there. My daughter decided she’s going to sleep with him tonight because he’s always moving around at night and she needs to keep an eye on him.
Today’s activity is to look at Christmas lights. Our community has an event tonight where everyone goes out for a walk in the neighbourhood and looks at each others’ Christmas lights. Some people offer hot chocolate and adult beverages along the way and there is a collection of non-perishable goods to donate. It’s a fun night to go out and socialize with neighbours.
