Our Advent Activity Calendar

Wow, things have been so busy around here lately and I just haven't had any time to post. However, I hope things will change and I will be able to post more during the advent season :)


We started the tradition of an advent activity calendar last year. I like to include as many activities as possible and steer away from too much materialism. The kids enjoy these activities so much and I am sure the will be lots of fun for mom and dad too :) In the future, I would like to include more community service activities, but love bug is still a bit young this year. 


Take a peek into the activities we will do this year. I will try to post pics frequently as well, capturing these moments...

December 1: Set up the nativity scene

2: Get Christmas books from the library

3: Play Mary and Joseph and reenact their long journey

4: Make a Christmas box for kids in need (Smiley and Lovebug will each pick things and wrap their individual Christmas boxes)

5: Bake Graettimaenner (a Swiss tradition of baking a dough man for St. Nikolaus)

6: Celebrate St. Nikolaus

7: Make a gingerbread house

8: New PJ's for the kids

9: Make beeswax candles (rolled with beeswax sheets and wicking)

10: Watch a Christmas movie with popcorn and hot chocolate

11: View Christmas lights

12: Go ice skating (first time for the kids)

13: Make Christmas stars (window decoration)

14: Make Christmas cookies

15: Make gifts and cards for friends

16: Pick a Christmas Tree

17: Decorate our Christmas Tree

18: Make and Bake Salt Dough Ornaments

19: Paint our Salt Dough Ornaments

20: Visit Santa 

21: Each child gets to pick a new ornament

22: String popcorn and cranberries for the tree

23: Walk in the moonlight to see the moon/stars

24: Write a note to Santa, bake cookies for Santa and get carrots for the reindeers ready

What are your advent plans? Will you have a calendar? 

Tot School ~ Pumpkins

Here are some of the activities that were on our tot trays this week...

Lovebug sorted our critters, by type (here ducks) and then by color. 

She worked on these Melissa and Doug shape puzzles...

She worked on this number puzzle... 

and this transportation puzzle (we had a big puzzle week, apparently). 

Yet another puzzle ;)

Working with our connectors (from Lakeshore). She loves sorting them by color... 

 We also took a fun trip to the pumpkin patch, where each child got to pick their own pumpkin. We had a great time :)

 The trip started with an educational intro on pumpkins...

Then we went on a hay ride and finally we got to pick our pumpkins..

Check out Carisa's blog to see what other tots have been up to this week... 

Preschool ~Pumpkins

Handwriting Practice...

We continue to move slowly through our handwriting practice. It isn't Smiley's favorite thing to do, so I am trying to keep it light and fun, mainly focusing on games. This week, we worked on the letter E again. We started by tracing our sandpaper letter E. 

We then did some letter E exercises from our Handwriting Without Tears (HWT) workbook... 

We assembled the letter E with our wooden pieces (part of HWT)... 

And we finally traced a few E's...

Reading...

Smiley continues to like his easy readers from our Hooked on Phonics Kindergarten pack. He learned a few new sight words this week and we practiced them through various games...

I put one of his sight words on his train track, and he had to read the word in order for the road block to be able to be lifted off... 

Pumpkin Theme...

Smiley has been really interested in pumpkins lately. So, we have been reading quite a few books about pumpkins, fall, and halloween. We also worked on several pumpkin printables from 2 Teaching Mommies. 

Making pumpkin patterns...

Labeling the parts of a pumpkin....

Measuring vines...

The highlight, of course, was a trip to the pumpkin patch (including hay ride) :)

 

Halloween Crafts...

We've been very busy crafting and decorating our house for Halloween over the past several days. Here are some of the things the kids have created:

Smiley made a spider from clay. He formed clay into a spider shape. He strung orange beads on black pipe cleaners and then poked the pipe cleaners into the clay. We let it dry for a couple of days and are now enjoying it as a Halloween decoration... 

Our little love bug made this monster. She simply colored a paper plate and glued on little arms and eyes :)

We also made this box monster. Simply decorating and drawing on a shoe box, covered in purple and pink paper (love bug's favorite colors). 

Tot School ~ Fall continued...

~Our little love bug is currently 24 months old~

We continued with our fall activities this past week. I made a sensory bin for the kids, which they loved. I included oats, textile leaves, and eraser pumpkins. Lovebug really enjoyed scooping the oats into our halloween pails...

We sorted leaves by color...

We worked on different Halloween crafts this week as well. Lovebug made a bat...

Later in the week, the kids enjoyed scooping corn kernels. 

Making Lego towers...

Working on a mommy-baby animal puzzle. 

Finger painting a fall painting :) Somehow the paint always ends up on love bug ;)

Preschool ~ Fall Fun

We continued to enjoy the fall season around here and engaged in several fall-inspired activities. However, the weather has been a bit crazy around here, with temperatures in the 80s-90s!

Fine Motor/Sensory/Writing Activities...

We really love the wooden pieces of our Handwriting Without Tears program, and not just to form letters! Smiley loves using the pieces as ramps for his cars, as bridges, or ladders for his fire truck :)

We did also use them to build a gigantic E, F, and L though ;)

The kids enjoyed playing with a fall-themed sensory box that included oatmeal, textile leaves, pumpkin erasers and small apple prints. I also gave them a few Halloween-themed buckets that I got from the Target dollar section a few weeks ago...

We sorted fall leaves by color. This was really an activity for the tot, but Smiley liked to participate for a little while...

Making patterns...

Later that week, I let the kids play with corn kernels. They LOVED it! All they needed were a few buckets, spoons and their trucks...

The kids had such a great time finger painting our ocean mural a couple of months ago that I thought it would be great to make a fall mural. Smiley started by practicing writing the letters L, F and E, before just mixing all the colors together ;) Unfortunately, I was too slow to capture his letters on camera... (I think this might have been the letter L)

Additional crafts included bats and pumpkins :) I love fall!

Everything else...

Reading continues to go really well. Smiley loves to read his little readers (hooked on phonics- K). He also played ABC Reading Eggs on the computer once or twice this week. It's great practice to reinforce sounding out and practicing his sight words.

Math just continues to be an everyday occurrence around here. Smiley is often counting something, adding, or subtracting. The singapore math textbook I purchased isn't really working for us right now. The concepts are too easy, and he isn't interested in writing numerals yet. So, for now we're just continuing with our everyday hands-on math :) Eventually, I would like to either purchase Montessori Math materials or Right Start materials. We'll see... 

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