Ryan and Jack are doing so well at their preschool, and they bring home adorable art projects every week (though I wish Miss Anita wasn't so fond of glitter...). I have been seeing lots of great blogs about children's Christmas crafts and art activities, so I decided to try a few with my little elves.
First up, collage Christmas trees. I found magazine pages with green images (trees, grass, mouthwash bottles) and cut them into squares. I freehanded two Christmas trees out of white paper, then handed Ryan the glue to start making his collage.
His immediate response was that he didn't WANT to glue the squares on his tree, he wanted to put them in his "collection" (he has turned into quite the pack rat lately). I found a couple magazine pictures of actual Christmas trees, so he agreed he would glue those squares on.
Yes, he is wearing a fleece jacket and Crocs sandals. Colorado boys!
Much like the pinecone birdfeeder project, he glued five pieces on and declared that he was ALL DONE. I bugged him to add a few more pieces, and then just gave up and commended him on his use of white space.
I dabbed the glue onto Jack's tree for him, but he still was a little challenged getting the pieces to stick, so he said, "No, YOU do it, Mama." It's a really lovely collage, if I do say so myself...
My children are obsessed with pompons (AKA "fuzzy balls") so I was excited to find a big bag of Christmas-colored ones at the thrift store. There were all sizes from teeny-tiny to big puff ball, so the boys enjoyed practicing fine motor skills, counting and sorting by size/color (and putting them in their mouths, OF COURSE).
Ryan, of course, only wanted the green balls ("Green is the color of my turtle so green is my favorite color!").
The next day we were all home I thought I would recruit Ryan to make some wrapping paper for me - I bought cookie cutters shaped like a snowflake, snowman, and Christmas tree, and dug out the gingerbread man and candy cane cutter I've had forever, then poured red and green tempera paints into shallow plates.
Ryan was not too crazy about the cookie cutter idea - first, he was upset that there wasn't yellow and blue paint, too, since he knows we have those colors. Second, he was much happier to just smear paint around with a sponge brush.
So, I scrubbed the paint off the cutters and used them to make pancakes a few days later, which were a much bigger hit with the boys.
Now if only Christmas would get here already - I'm running out of energy (though not ideas - the interwebs are full of those...).
After agreeing to host 17 people at our house for Thanksgiving, I was coming up short with creative ideas for Ryan's birthday party, a mere two weeks later. I looked at a few options around town - gymnastics parties (all the reasonable times were booked), pool parties (did that for his 2nd birthday), and thought, "I wonder how expensive a Zoolights birthday party would be?"
A quick trip to the internet revealed that it is VERY expensive, but that a regular daytime birthday party, while certainly costlier than hosting people at our house, would not bankrupt us. Plus, we wouldn't have to spend three days cleaning the house before the party and a full day cleaning after the party - totally worth it right there.
Of course, Ryan's birthday is in DECEMBER, so weather was a consideration since much of the zoo exhibits are outdoors. We've been having an incredibly mild stretch of weather with no winter in sight, so I decided to take a gamble and book the party - the animal demo and party itself would take place indoors, and there are a number of indoor exhibits at the zoo, too.
I've never played the lottery or spent a lot of time in Vegas, which is probably a good thing, because I lost this gamble BUT GOOD. This morning dawned bright and crisp with an inch of snow on the ground and a temperature hovering around 17 degrees. The show must go on, of course (and the party was already paid for!) so we bundled up and headed downtown.
Our friends arrived in good spirits and the party host Nicole and volunteer Ruth led us to the conservation center and party room.
I was pleasantly surprised by the room - it was spacious and full of stuffed animals and books, and even had tasteful holiday decor. Nicole gave us a little talk about what to expect from the animal presention, and we headed over to the conservation education room.
Ryan was REALLY excited about the large Birthday Boy button he got, but I later realized that he never took his fleece jacket off so no one saw his "It's My Birthday!" shirt.
The room had a number of terreriums featuring all kinds of reptiles and amphibians, plus a large cage with two noisy macaws. Because Ryan's favorite animal is the turtle, Nicole agreed to feature three turtles in the presentation.
We all took our seats on the floor and she brought out a leaf turtle. We talked about where turtles live, what they like to eat, and how their shells work, then Nicole walked around and let each child stroke the back of the turtle.
Then she brought out an ornate box turtle. We learned that it has a hinged shell and can close up tight against predators.
The last turtle was a pancake tortoise named Short Stack. He was much bigger than the other two and the children could use two fingers to stroke his shell.
We went back to the party room and Grandma Nancy read a zoo animal ABC book to the kids while I frosted the cupcakes.
The children had a lot of fun exploring the room and burning off some energy. The volunteer, Ruth, brought out a bean bag toss game. Before eating cupcakes, they played like this:
After eating cupcakes, they (mostly the boys, of course!) decided it would be more fun to shove all the stuffed animals through the hippo's mouth.
The party package included plastic water bottles with silly straws as favors, but we are trying to cut down on the amount of plastic in our lives (plus everyone in Colorado already owns a million water bottles) so I made my own favors. Before I heard the weather forecast I assumed families would go explore the zoo on their own after the party, so I decided to make little snack kits (we are all about snacking at the Fleming house - just ask Ryan).
I bought mini loaf pans and paper muffin cups and filled them with banana chips, animal crackers, Milk and Honey Peanut Butter Balls (so easy and TASTY) and Homemade Clif Bars (also easy, also crazy tasty). I then wrapped each pan in a festive cotton napkin, tied furoshiki style.
Most of our guests decided not to brave the wintry weather (many of them have zoo memberships and can come back when it's less frostbite-inducing!) but we wanted to go see MORE TURTLES at the Tropical Discovery exhibit. Grandma and Grandpa and Aunt Sarah bundled up to come along.
Note the crushing crowds - NOT. We pretty much had the zoo to ourselves and I joked that I got a real deal renting out the whole place for a truly private (albeit chilly) party.
We've been doing some fun Christmas crafts lately, the most recent being birdseed pinecones. With no snow on the ground and still plentiful berries on the trees (not to mention a not-yet-composted compost bin full of kitchen scraps), the birds aren't exactly wasting away around here, but it was still a fun activity.
Jena, David and Andrew joined us for this sensory exploration.
Jena wisely supervised David's peanut butter spreading, while I left Ryan to his own devices (meaning, he just ate all his peanut butter and ignored the pinecone and birdseed).
Two smears of PB and a scoop of birdseed and he was "All done, Mama!"
David wanted to make sure his birds got a LOT of protein.
Jack engaged in his fair share of taste-testing...
...including quality control of the birdseed!
So proud of his pinecone masterpiece!
David also created a birdseed beauty.
The finished feast.
Once there was no more peanut butter to consume, Ryan was off to play in the basement. Jack and David, however, really enjoyed the tactile experience of scooping the seed using different utensils and moving it back and forth between containers.
Jena made another pinecone feeder while Andrew supervised...
Apparently he was more interested in taste-testing and quality-control, too...
It's no secret that I don't particularly enjoy the Christmas - oh, sorry, HOLIDAY - season. There's so much commercialism and hustle and bustle and expectation and ugh - I'd just rather be on a beach somewhere.
However, I do want Ryan and Jack to have good Christmas memories, so today I put on my less Grinch-y face and pulled out the boxes of Christmas decorations.
I love our little fake tree because a) I can put it up out of reach of the children if I need to and 2) we have enough meaningful ornaments that we don't have to use a lot of fillers.
This year I took a chance and put it at toddler/preschooler height, but I only used unbreakable (or easily repairable) ornaments.
The boys had a lot of fun hanging the ornaments and "helped" me with some of the other decorations around the house (which I forgot to take pictures of - this little tree looks very Charlie Brown Christmas without seeing how the rest of the house is decorated!).
We attended the annual Rocky Mountain Train Show with our little engineers:
They were most excited about the wooden railway set - I promised them they could go back and play after we saw the rest of the train show.
Jack was still not feeling so hot so he was content to watch the garden railway layouts...
...and get snuggles from Grandma.
And now back to the toy trains. Ryan was fascinated by the crane and magnetic cargo cars and we literally had to drag them out of there (yes, Ryan will be getting a crane for his birthday...). They both did a great job playing with the other little boys.
