Christmas treats

Here are a couple of Christmas treats that we've made and/or consumed recently.  I saw the cutest reindeer snacks on pinterest but the link wasn't one you could follow back so I didn't really know how they were made, except that they are nutter butter cookies dipped in chocolate. 

There were all kinds of difficulties because the pretzel antlers and the sticks didn't allow the nutter butters to go back together enough to hold them in a sandwich.  They were a little messy, but a chocolate mess is never a bad mess.

The eyes are white chocolate chips with a little dot of chocolate on the tips.  The noses are red m&ms. 

I put them in the fridge for the night.  When I pulled them off the tray the next morning, they fell apart.  The sandwiches fell apart and the antlers broke.  The sticks fell out and they were a mess.  I made 30 or so and got about 18 that were half way presentable, mostly because they were near others that looked alright.

I took the reindeer to Lou's class Christmas party.  A mom brought these pretty cake balls to my room's party.  They have candy cane sticks and crushed candy canes on the tops.  They were prettier than my reindeer for sure.

This is the snack we brought to Lou's leader day.  It doesn't fit the normal 'healthy' standards that they like to have for preschool snack, but it was the last day before break and it does involve a fruit.  They are little strawberry Santa hats.  I saw them on Sweet Tooth via pinterest.  They used brownies but we went with store bought chocolate chip cookies.  The white is just cool whip. 

Lou's teacher brought these adorable chocolate covered cherry mice to our teacher Christmas party.  I brought Lou and Bee home one each in a little cup.  One mouse lost his nose and the other has a chipped ear.  They were tasty just the same.  Don't tell anyone, but the kids ate them for breakfast.

My students sent me home with a few tins of Christmas goodies.  I'm all set with the sweets this year.  I think I'm going to need to be a little more conscientiousness about my sweets next year.  Lets wait until next year.

Christmas program and Santa

Just a post for the grandparents mostly.  Lou had his Christmas program last week.  His little preschool class sang two songs together and then all of our classes sang one together.  He practiced and practiced at home and despite his normal shyness, he sang and did the signs.

He even wore his Christmas sweater for me (and for the $1 bribe!). 

Let's see if this video works:

nope....

We also went to visit Santa last week.  We don't "do" Santa at our house, but we do go visit for the fun program that they put together at the library.  Plus, this Santa is the nicest Santa ever. He is so kind to the children and sings and tells stories and reads and then takes lots of time with each visiting kiddo.  The last two years we have been, he has read a Jan Brett book, Twas the Night Before Christmas.  Last year, we stayed after and talked to him about his program and how much we enjoyed it and such.  He and hubby talked for 15 minutes about books and such.  We had just seen Jan Brett maybe the month before and had one extra signed book plate.  We decided that we'd save it for him and take it this year.

It was a long time to wait, but we did remember to bring it this year and he was thrilled.  He said he doesn't often get on anyone's Christmas list. He was so appreciative. 

He put it right into his book. 

Bee asked before hand if we would tell him that we 'didn't do Santa' and we decided that it wouldn't be kind of us and we should play along.  She told him she wanted a fish tank.  Full of water and fish.  He seemed surprised and said he didn't know how it would travel on the sled, but he would see what he could do.   He looked to me to see how to proceed.

Santa doesn't know that there is a full of water and full of fish- fish tank in my sewing room closet ready to go.  I can't wait to give it to her, there are a bunch of ghost shrimp in the bottom of the tank and a couple pregnant guppy mamas ready to give birth. 

christmas potholders

At Thanksgiving I gave my sister a little pre-hosting hostest gift. She is hosting us at Christmas this year, but we are really going up after Christmas, so I thought she'd like her gift early so she gets a bit more use out of it.  She liked the potholders and thought they'd make a nice gift for a few people on her list. 

They are on their way to her, but I thought I'd go ahead and share them so she can see them.  

6 extra large pot holders (that's how I like them) in three sets of two.  She asked for red with white dots and a light sage green worked in.  The sage doesn't look like it matches, but I think it looks better in person.  I like how how blue got in there too.

Potholders like this make up pretty quickly, It's the binding that takes awhile.  I tried using store bought binding, but that didn't look nice and I tried machine sewing the binding, but that also didn't look nice.  I went back to doing it by hand and just carried one in my purse pretty much everywhere I went for a week.  People that I see regularly kept saying, "Are you still working on that?" 

Not working on it anymore!  It's shipped and I'm getting to do some sewing for myself this week!

Here's her set:

thumb print reindeer

Just a short today. We didn't make this, but it's construction looks easy enough. Bee received this little thumb print reindeer tag on a little bag of 'reindeer feed' (oatmeal and glitter) as a little favor from her school Christmas party.  I love how simple and sweet it is.  

 If we had a brown ink pad I think we'd make a bunch up. But, I'm not going shopping this week if I have any control over the situation!  I went out Saturday and was in the most frustrating traffic mess.  Even Bee's road rage was coming out!  She threatened to get out and spank every one of the driver's bottoms if they didn't move! 

farm day

Last weekend was a farm day.  We got to go out to the farm where we get our meat and get to know the animals.  Or get to know dinner. 

Bee seems over her vegetarian-ism, unless she doesn't like dinner.  Regardless, I think it's important they know where our food comes from- other than the grocery store.  

At the farmers market, there is a stand that's sponsored by some farmers council or something.  They have a spinner that kids can spin and each slot has a picture of some item that comes from a farm.  The kids have to explain the farm connection.  Bee can explain all of the pictures!  For example, one is pizza.  She told them pizza is made from dough that is made from flour.  Flour comes from wheat, which grows in a farmers field.  She also told them that the sauce is made from tomatoes that we grow in the garden, but she prefers sauce from a jar.

It was a nice cool day, but we wore our long underwear and bundled up.  We all even felt warm enough to go on a nice long hike.

It was so good for Lou to get out and move around.  He's been inside a lot lately, but he really needs to be out.

Bee and Lou tried to pet each animal.  The sheep dog and the sows were the only animals wanting some attention.  The animals are all free range (except the sheepdog- which we all think is funny) so they come and go as they please.

The sheep did not want to be pet.

But the friendly pig wanted to play.  We suggested that she find a smart little spider and make friends right away. 

The kids really wanted to hold a baby pig.  I told them they could try but I didn't think they would not have any luck.  They did not.

 The mama pigs are very used to people since they were bottle fed as babies (their mama had died), but their babies had a natural slight fear of people.   I wouldn't want two running kids to hold me either.

We ended our visit in the hen house.  Bee and Lou love gathering eggs.  It's like a little treasure hunt for them. A dirty little stinky treasure hunt. 

it's not hoarding

The last of the Christmas orders were shipped Friday,  the last day of school and the kid's Christmas parties, and Lou's leader day were Friday as well..... which means I can get back to regular things now.  Like sleep and a normal level of sanity and snack preparation. We just have two birthday parties and a few last minute gifts to pick up this weekend to fit in.  I only had to pull a few late nights to get all the orders done on time! Unfortunately I had to turn down about a dozen last minute order wanna-bes.  This was my fourth year on Etsy, and the best so far. 

(snow day... it snowed like 2 inches in a few hours in the morning. Lou and I sledded and built a snowman.  The snow was all gone by the time Bee got home from school.  She missed it all.  It's been so warm this week, we only needed jackets!)

Back to the hoarding issue.  I am not a true hoarder, it's just a running joke with several people that I must be a hoarder.  Whenever someone says, "I need to find a little ___ for a project."  or "Can you pick up ____ at the craft store?"  I usually have some on hand.  Saved from an old project, picked up a garage sale, or sent to be by someone else who knows I collect items.   I'm also often given little sacks of random left over craft items or fabric scraps (because everyday is Christmas) because they know that I will save it and use it at some point.  I say it's not hoarding if you keep it organized and tidy.

Recently, a girl I teach with brought me 15 of these plastic caddies.  She said, I thought you could use these. "Because I'm a hoarder?"  "You'll use them," she said.  I knew that every person in my family would get pretty excited about these boxes.  Bee had claimed the most.  Her polly pocket clothes and accessories are organized in three boxes, her pet shop accessories are in a fourth.  Lou's mighty guys pieces are in a box and another holds random marbles and string.  The best news is that there are 10 more to fill up. 

beginning measuring- preschool style

 We did such a fun measuring activity the other day. It was one of those activities that I had planned months ago and didn't get time to do so I kept it in my basket and carried it to school many many days before it finally fit in my plans again. It was also one of those activities that is pretty basic, and you really don't know if it will be a dud or lots of fun.   Thankfully, we enjoyed it.

I used the book Actual Size by Steve Jenkins.  As I read it, I had our leader for the day up with me to compare her eyeball to the ostriches and her tongue to the ant eaters, etc.  We did a lot of comparing as I read.   This was the first time we have done any measuring.

One page in the book has a gorilla's hand and a Pygmy Lemur's hand.  I traced them both as well as my hand.  As a whole class, we measured all three using unifex cubes.  We did more comparing and ordering of the size of these.

I had (weeks ago when I thought we'd be doing this activity) traced each child's hand on a half sheet of paper.  After demonstrating what to do on their sheet, I had them measure their own hand with the blocks and record the number.  They laid them all out and counted them up.  We all also recorded the number for the gorilla's hand. 

I gathered all of these up and made a little class book with them.  Some friends had hands 6 blocks tall, others 7.  Some of the kids asked if they could measure more things, so I turned them all loose in the classroom with blocks to measure more things.  Several kids got together to measure the long counter top in our room.  It was something like 187 blocks long.  They built and built and then started counting.  They would count and then mess up and start again.  Two little friends worked on it after everyone else gave up and finally got a number close to the actual count. 

new to me abc phonic song

I just wanted to tell you about a phonics song that I downloaded last week that I LOVE!  I stumbled on AJ Jenkins downloadable Mp3s here at KidsTV123.  The songs are just a few dollars and totally worth it if you have little people learning letter sounds.  I have been working on letter sounds with Lou pretty hard since the summer and it's just been with the singing of these phonic songs that he's gotten it all of a sudden. 

I made up some visuals to go with the song I like best.  It is a simple song that says, A is for apple, /a/ /a/ apple, then goes on to the next letter and sound.  The cards just add a visual element to reinforce letter recognition.  I played it for my preschoolers and they too were able to sing along with my cards after the first few letters.  Lou and Bee have both been requesting this song at home and Lou is able to tell me the sounds when he and I sing it without the music.  I am going to be playing this song a lot more at preschool. Maybe everyday.

(This is not an official endorsement.  I got no cool deal from them, I just love the songs)