A few Christmas projects

Now that Christmas is over, I can share some of the homemade things I did this year!
I have some cute, handmade stockings that I've been using since we got married.  Problem was that I only have 3 and this year I needed 4!  So, following the scrappy log cabin style, I made another stocking (along with some help from my mom!).  That would be easier and cheaper than buying 4 new ones, right?  The only problem is that seeing the beautiful quilt shop fabric I used on this one made me want to replace the others!! I loved the old ones until I saw the new.  And I cut this one a little small and sewed it more like a boot than like a stocking. So I guess next year I'll be making 4 new ones.  So much for easier and cheaper!

 fabric close up

with his buddies!

 My mom helped made this for me while I worked on my stocking.  My cute girl needed a new pillow for Christmas.  But what fun is a pillow without a sparkly pillowcase to cover it?  For the record, I know how to make these, but my mom has a serger and it is so much faster on that!

 I made 2 of these I spy bags.  One for a friend's birthday and one for my kids.  This is the first time I actually made one.  A few lessons I learned:
1. The hardest part is finding things to put in it.
2. Buttons are a good solution for #1
3. Don't line the back.  I sandwiched interfacing between 2 layers of fabric so the wrong side wouldn't show through the clear window.  Better to use flannel and have it be pliable - and it's ok if the wrong side shows!
4. Use hard laminating for the tag.
5. Make these square.  Seriously, what was I thinking with the circle?  Let's pick the hardest shape to sew.
6. Shower curtain liner will not work as the plastic.  Just buy some from JoAnn's.  (Or borrow some from  your sister who is also making I spy bags, like I did).

 Ours had fish on it.  For our little friend, I did a sports fabric that I've loved for a while but has needed the right project!

 Here's the contents list....

 but 3 year olds can't read, so I took pictures!

 I made table runners for some ladies at church I work with.  I was at the quilt shop buying fabric for my stocking and they had so many cute Christmas fabric, that I decided to make these so I had an excuse to buy some of the fabric!

 Love it!

 Some hooded towels for my cute baby! (In BYU colors, of course!!)

 A dolly blanket for my daughter's baby doll.  I used scraps from her brother's quilt.  Looking back, I wish I had added one more row on each side so it was a little bigger.  It works ok, but not quite big enough to sufficiently wrap the baby doll.  Or so I have been told.

 Backed with minky.  I wish I had a blanket backed with minky.  That stuff is so soft!!

 And finally I actually made some projects that I found online.  Its a miracle!! Big sister helped me make this one for little brother.  (I think the original is a little cuter, but I like mine too!)

 And a couple pom pom scarves for a cute niece! I hope she likes them!! I used variegated yarn for these, thinking that would give good color contrast.  I like how they turned out, but I think next time I would use 2 different colors of yarn.  They turned out different than I pictured, still cute, but different!

December Preschool

We started December learning about bears and how they hibernate.  Our letter was B! 

Some books we read.  The Very Cranky Bear is a favorite in our house!

 B snack - Teddy Grahams and blackberries!

 You can learn about B and not play with balloons.  We read this cute story before doing some balloon dancing.

 Somehow that's all the pictures I took of the bear unit.  I know we did a Bear hunt, we searched for things that were big, then brown, then blue.  We pretended to be bears and hibernated.  Then I'd say, "It's Spring!!" and we'd wake up and look for something to eat! We also learned "the bear went over the mountain".

The next 2 weeks were spent on Christmas.  The first week was Santa Christmas.  Having been an elementary school teacher, I have a few Christmas favorites.

We made cute Santas out of triangles (which I have no pictures of).  We played Santa and the Children.  3 would go to sleep and 1 "Santa" would bring them each a present, then go and hide.  Then the children would wake up to see what they got for Christmas.  It was really fun.  

I thought it might be fun to have them draw their letters in flour.  2 outright refused to do it.  The other 2 told me in no uncertain terms they did not want anything to do with the letters.  So they just played in the flour and pretended it was snow.  Whatever works!! (Can you believe I have 4 preschoolers and not a single one of them likes to get their hands messy?  No fingerpainting for us! 

Week 2 we did "Jesus Christmas" and I tried to involve the Savior in our Christmas activities.
After reading my college bud's blog, I copied her idea and did stations.  The kids loved them!! I need to be better about the timing though. Some activities took way less time then I thought they would and so we ended up having everyone wait for someone to be done before we could switch.
The stations were: ordering sheep biggest to smallest

 Matching

 Counting stars (this took the longest)

 And tracing shapes, which I didn't get a picture of.

We also practiced our fine motor skills by learning to cut.  I gave them some scissors and scrap paper.

 We read some good Christ-centered Christmas books.

 We kept learning "Must Be Santa" to sing for our mommies at the Christmas party. (Ok, not Jesus related, but it took us two weeks to learn the song!)

 More cutting practice.

 We talked about what the symbols of Christmas mean.  Angels, candy canes, stars, lights, bells, presents, trees, wreaths.

 We did a nativity puppet show (and then performed it for mommies at the party)

 We colored candy canes and I let the kids wrap them themselves.  I tried to get the kids to do a pattern on the candy canes, but they all just colored it however they wanted.  Whatever!

 At the party we ate reindeer sandwiches.

 and made paper plate Santas.  I thought the popcorn beard was a great idea.  This picture shows the most popcorn that got glued on. The rest got eaten.  And some beards (like my own child's) were nonexistent.  The great thing about preschool is I don't care if they don't do it just "right"! No test scores, report cards, SST meetings, etc that I have to account for all the work the child did or didn't do.  Not gluing on a popcorn beard is the least of my worries!!

I'm sure there was more, but that's all can remember!  Now I'm all caught up and hopefully I can keep up week to week when it's easier to remember what we've done! 

November Preschool

I am so far behind, let's see if I can catch up in 2 posts!!

In November, we talked about transportation and the letter G (for "go"... I was saving "T" for Thanksgiving!)
We read this cute rebus story.  And one certain little student, who loves trains, got more and more excited every time we repeated the rhyme.  It was adorable watching his little face light up more every time we repeated it!!

 Other things that start with G - grapes, goat, goose, groundhog

 We read lots of transportation books- including several pages of a Richard Scarry book- all kinds of boats, trucks, cars, planes.  I love Richard Scarry!!

 We played transportation memory

 We did patterns in math with lacing blocks.

 We also talked about the letter T for Thanksgiving.  We reached in our letter bag and found things that start with T.  Can you spot them?

 (T Rex, Tiger, Tractor, Table, Train, Truck, Tree)
We also sang Wheels on the Bus, and pretended to drive different modes of transportation.  Then we pretended to drive a bus and talked about the things we saw. We also sorted cars, trains, planes, boats, and trucks by the number of wheels they had.
 At our Thanksgiving party, we had yummy snacks

 (pumpkin muffin turkey)

 And turkey cake pops, courtesy of one of the moms - I could never bake something that cute!!

 We read some great T books!

 We reached our hand in the letter bag to look for letters that were in TURKEY.  Then we matched the right letters to the word.

 We glued feathers on our foam turkeys

 We practiced reading rhythms.  (This picture should be rotated - x for stomp, dot for clap).

 We learned about the letter O and opposites

 I tried having them draw with their left and and then with their right.  They ended up just wanting to trace their hands.  That works too.

 We played opposite memory.

 We had opposite snacks (soft and chewy, hard and crunchy)

 I introduced calendar time.  I guess I should have been doing this all along.  But we learned a song about the days of the week and the months of the year.

 We read some opposite books.  "The Opposite" was one of the class favorites.

 We practiced one to one correspondence by counting different objects in the egg carton.  I wrote the numbers in the cup to help with number recognition too.  This day we only counted to 7, so I put a sticker on the number 7 so they knew when to stop.

 We learned about seasons and the letter S. Read some great books.

 Put stars on the letter S.

 Read about things that start with S.

We also pretended to be snakes and talked about how snakes move around the ground.  We sorted clothes into what season they would be worn (raincoat, light jacket, scarf, swimsuit, gloves, etc).  We decorated a tree with how it would look during each season.
And that was all of November that I can remember!! Now on to December!