A (digital) letter to Santa

We haven't written our letter to Santa yet, so we thought we might use the powers of the Internet to speed things up a bit, as it is only 3 days to Christmas; who knows how long it would take for our postcard to reach the North Pole? There are many free websites that let children enter their wishlist online and send a reply for Santa. We sent two online letters to Santa today and had fun on those two websites with different digital activities.


North Pole
On this website, we had to create an account, but the user interface was very friendly, with hardly any adverts (all of them easy to ignore). The main page was Santa's secret village, from which a range of activities was available, such as listening to stories, songs, a crafts section, possibility to send e-cards, etc... There were games which were well suited to pre-schoolers, including a memory game which both Ju and Lilo enjoyed greatly. The stories we listened to involved reindeer and elves, and even though the story reader sounded a bit computer-generated, the boys enjoyed listening to the different stories.

The letter to Santa was well laid out for pre-schoolers, with a pictorial selection of toys to choose from for their wish list, as well as space to enter their own wish list. On top of Ju's wish list this year is a sprayer, which we hope Santa has in his workshop. Ju's special message to Santa was "Happy Birthday and Thank you". I think perhaps his understanding is that Jesus and Santa are the same person. This site allows parents to word their own letter from Santa in reply to their child's.

Screenshot from our letter to Santa on Northpole.com

A Letter 4 Santa
For this website, we didn't have to create an account, but the site was full of clickable adverts. The range of activities was more limited than the North Pole and not as well presented. The games sections was also aimed at older children, unfortunately for us. The sing along section was lovely, although we didn't know most of the songs on it. We couldn't watch anything in the movies section as they were restricted to US viewers. Ju really enjoyed the online colouring book.

The letter to Santa was decently laid out, and as a bonus, we got a well-worded reply straight away on screen. All in all, we preferred the North Pole website to A Letter 4 Santa, but the latter had the distinct advantage of allowing us to remain anonymous.

Screenshot from our letter to Santa on Aletter4santa.com

Wrapping Presents Playtime

As I am not the most organised person, I generally leave wrapping presents to the last minute. It then becomes such a chore, as it has to be done quickly and well. Darling Him loves doing it, so he generally has the pleasure of wrapping for both of us (well, I do wrap his, to keep it a surprise). When we wrote down "wrapping presents" as one of our countdown to Christmas activities, I wasn't actually intending Ju to wrap all my presents for me. The aim was to playfully experiment with matching different sizes of paper with different object sizes, to develop coordination with sticking sticky tape while holding paper, and generally discuss the point of wrapping presents at all. Also, did I mention Ju loves folding paper at the moment?

This is what I gathered for today's playful activity:

• jam jar lids
• several packaging boxes of different sizes: small cosmetic box, light bulb box,...
• pieces of wrapping paper of different sizes (use recycled paper from previous years/gifts)
• scissors
• small strips of sellotape (lots!)
• last year's Christmas card, main picture cut into small squares
• hole punch
• pieces of wool

Ju chose a jam jar lid to wrap first, and he folded it up inside some paper. He stuck sellotape, not necessarily on the bits that needed to be stuck together, but more on top of the paper. This allowed us to discuss the point of sellotape in closing any "gaps" and fixing the folds onto the main bit of the present wrap.

Wrapping a jam jar lid

He then cut some paper with his scissors and realised that it was too small for the box he had originally intended to wrap, so he chose one of the smaller boxes.

Ju cuts paper to wrap this box but then realises that the piece of paper is too small

Wrapping paper absorbed him for quite a while and he didn't really get frustrated until the fourth wrap. 

Holding the folded paper while putting the sellotape on is tricky

He then punched one hole in each of the tags and set about threading the wool into the hole to make the tag attachment.

Punching holes through the tags

Threading wool through the tag

Present ready: " I will put it under the tree now"

Wonderful Snowflakes on our Window

Today we were decorating the window in the kitchen, one of the activities still left in our Christmas countdown activity garland. Our themes were snowflakes and transparency of colours. The structure of a snowflake is nearly completely unique, because complex shapes emerge as the flake moves through differing temperature and humidity regimes. However, most snowflakes have a hexagonal symmetry. The vagueness and wonder in snowflake patterns, combined with the fact that there are certain rules to follow, make them an ideal craft project.

Paper snowflakes, plain and rainbow-coloured

We started by folding and cutting an A4 sheet of paper to make a square. Ju loves folding paper and experimenting with cutting through several thicknesses of paper at the moment, so he was very keen to do this.

Ju folds his paper

Because we used standard printing paper, it was actually really hard to cut through the many layers of paper once we had folded it as per this tutorial. Ju helped with the folding, but I had to do the cutting. We folded a square in two to make a triangle, then in two again; then we folded the two outer corners onto the middle line, and folded this in two. Then we cut the outside to give us a wedge. I recommend you look at the tutorial linked above, it's very clearly explained.
Once we had a wedge, I just cut into it to make patterns, and then we opened up the piece of paper. What wonder awaits when the insignificant wedge reveals itself into a beautifully symmetrical and delicate snowflake! And so, we made two paper snowflakes today.

Our two paper snowflakes, before and after unfolding

One of them went up on the window.

We had a little fun laminating the other snowflake, sandwiching it together with some coloured tissue paper. We cut the laminated shape out, and made a hole with hole punch to hang it up. Ju threaded some wool into the hole and we hung it on the window too.

Snowy soft snowflakes

For this, we took some glittery Christmas drape and cut out two large six-pointed snowflake shapes. Really simple, but it looks like fresh, soft, giant snow.

Drape snowflake on the window

Hot glue snowflakes

I have to thank We Lived Happily Ever After for this idea. My hot glue gun and I set to work on the window to create some six-pointed snowflakes by drawing them free-hand, while Ju and Lilo had their lunch (cunning trick to keep them away from the hot glue). 

I put a little bit of silver glitter just before the hot glue set to make them extra sparkly. Drawing the snowflakes wasn't hard, but I found mine were a little bit messier looking than I would have liked. I expect I should get better at it with some practice. As the evening is drawing in, these are looking even prettier as their three-dimensional opacity is reflecting the street lights glowing outside. 

Please note that this is not to be attempted if the weather is very cold, as the difference in temperature between the hot glue and the freezing outside surface of the window could cause the glass to crack. Thankfully we had no such worry. And ours is also a low temperature hot glue gun.

Hot glue gunning a snowflake on the window

My three hot glue snowflakes

We added to the snowflakes a few homemade stained glass effect window ornaments, including the Sharpie marker recycled stained window ornament we made on Day 8. We can now consider our kitchen window officially decorated. It will be lovely to look at our window from the street too. I wonder if Darling Him will notice when he gets home tonight.

Snowflake decorated window

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Pain d'epices and Recycled Baubles

It was Lilo's playgroup Christmas party today, so I thought we would bring something baked to contribute. This morning, Ju and I made a "pain d'epices", which is a French spiced honey cake. Although it translates literally as spice bread, it is not the same as gingerbread and it has its roots in China, from where it was brought over in the Middle Ages. It is also a cousin of German Lebkuchen. We used to eat this a lot for snack time as children and I have never really associated it with Christmas time, but it contains all the usual spices. I adapted the recipe from French recipe site marmiton to make it gluten-free.

Pain d'epices

- 250 g honey

- 250 g flour (I used Doves gluten-free plain flour)
- 100 g caster sugar
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tsp ground anise
- 1 tsp grated nutmeg
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 tsp ground ginger
- 2 eggs
- 50 ml milk

Pre-heat the oven at 160°C.

Heat up the honey in a saucepan until really runny and pour it into a bowl containing the flour, baking powder, sugar and spices. Mix well with a wooden spoon and gradually beat in 2 eggs and the vanilla extract, then add the lukewarm milk.

Ju stirs the cake mixture

Pour the mixture into a greased and floured loaf tin. Bake for 1 hour and turn out the cake when it has cooled down completely.

It keeps for one week wrapped in foil. 

Slice of delicious pain d'epices

It is delicious spread with butter or on its own and eating it takes me right back to childhood. The texture is slightly chewy and so moist, especially considering there is no fat in it. It is also deliciously sweet and spicy, a real taste of Christmas one can enjoy at any time of year. Luckily, even though it was appreciated at play group, competing cupcakes made by another mum meant there was some left over, so I took it home so Ju could try it after nursery.

Pain d'epices tasting

Santa and Elf Recycled Baubles

In previous years, we have made a footprint ceramic bauble at The Ceramic Experience and I have made various fabric baubles using polystyrene balls. On Day 1 we also made a string and glue ornament, which was pretty much a bauble, although not completely round. Baubles are definitely a must on any Christmas tree

String and glue ornament (top), fabric bauble (bottom left) and ceramic bauble (bottom right)

I have in the house coloured plastic balls from a ball pit that has been moved up to the attic, and I thought of a use for them today, which also allows us to complete another one of our Christmas countdown activity: to make a Christmas bauble. I started by putting a needle with thread through the top to ensure we could hang the bauble. 

Needle with thread through the top of the plastic ball

Then we took some felt and I cut a section from a circle so the boys could make hats for the tops of their baubles. We use Copydex to glue felt, seems to work quite well.

Ball, felt circle with section cut off and red marabou trim

Lilo wanted to make a Santa and Ju a little elf. Both boys glued their hats on and then decorated the bauble with trimmings of red marabou for Ju's elf's beard and cotton wool for the hat trim, bobble, and the beard. I helped Lilo stick some googly eyes and a black belt with a yellow buckle cut out of felt.

Ju gets gluing

Santa's eyes and beard

The boys couldn't wait to put their baubles in the tree. They are definitely getting the hang of this (!).

Ju's elf bauble

Lilo's santa bauble

Christmas tree fairies and hot chocolate

It was a beautiful, cold sunny day today so we met up with friends and their 3 year old son in town, and we all went to see the reindeer on display as part of the Christmas celebrations in our town. Our favourite was a 7-month-old white calf called Gavin. They were eating lichen and we found out lots about their antlers. 

Reindeer

We spent a lot of time outside  today, going up on the Ferris wheel and playing in the play park. A lovely hot chocolate with marshmallows was a well deserved treat, and it was also one of our Christmas garland countdown activities.

View from the top of the Ferris wheel

Hot chocolate and marshmallows

Our recipe is for a thick, Spanish-style hot chocolate, courtesy of Jamie Oliver. This makes a mix, which you can keep in a jar and re-use as required, or give as a gift.

• 2 tablespoons Horlicks

• 2 tablespoons cornflour

• 3 tablespoons icing sugar

• 4 tablespoons quality organic cocoa

• 100g quality dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids), finely grated

• a pinch of ground cinnamon

• a pinch of sea salt

For 1 pint of semi-skimmed milk, you need 5 heaped tablespoons of the hot chocolate mix. Heat up the milk (don't let it boil), then add the hot chocolate mix and stir over a medium heat until the chocolate starts to thicken. Ju likes to help stir the hot chocolate with a wooden spoon. For the children, I dilute the hot chocolate half and half with cold milk, which makes it slightly weaker and cools it down instantly. For Darling Him, I add a pinch of chilli powder. We all add some mini-marshmallows for an extra special treat and then it's time to enjoy...

Christmas tree fairies

We also made some quick tree fairies today, using wooden pegs. I cut out circles from some glittery Christmas drape which we got from the pound shop. I made a small hole in the middle, through which Lilo and Ju pushed the head of the wooden peg through.

Ju pushes the wooden peg through the hole

We then wrapped a white pipe cleaner around the neck and the fabric, and twisted it to the back, then wound the two ends of the pipe cleaner into 2 fairy wing shapes.

Creating the fairy wings with pipe cleaner

Then we glued some poylester filling on the head to make the hair and a silver bead chain around the waist to create the body and the skirt.

Glueing on hair and creating the waist of the fairy

It was then time for Ju to draw on some eyes and a smiley mouth with Sharpie marker pens and our beautiful tree fairies were ready.

Ju draws eyes and mouth on his fairy

Lilo's tree fairy

The boys enjoyed putting the fairies on the branches of our Christmas tree, although they first had to work out how to slot the branches between the fairies' peg legs.

It's hard work putting the fairy on the tree

Ju's tree fairy

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Sweet Christmas Singing

We are extremely lucky to live very locally to a charitable organisation that supports parents-to-be and families in early parenthood, the Pregnancy and Parents Centre in Edinburgh. They run a range of high quality classes for mums and dads-to-be and also for mums and babies up to school age. Having attended several of their classes in the past (ante-natal yoga, pregnancy singing, baby yoga, baby shia-tsu), we decided to give the new Saturday morning Baby and Toddler Music class a go today, as they were advertising a festive programme on Facebook. This way, we would be sure to address our remit of the day on our activity countdown garland, which was to learn a Christmas carol.

 After a few welcome and hello songs, Jackie, the class leader, sang several classics accompanied on her guitar, including Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Holy Night. Ju has been learning Christmas songs at nursery in preparation for the Christmas party next Wednesday, so he already knew a lot of the words, but enjoyed the session even more for it. There was a rendition of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star as Twinkle Twinkle Christmas Star, and a great finger rhyme about Christmas trees being all alone in the forest, then getting chopped and going to happy families.

There were lots of movement games as well, to allow the children to express their creativity. Ju and Lilo both enjoyed balancing bean bags on different body parts, swaying and twirling colourful scarves to make them into graceful snowflakes,as well as jumping and stomping their feet.

Lilo balances a bean bag on his head

Sound blocks, tamburins, maracas, bells and drums were made available for the children to bang, shake and play along.

Maracas, Sound blocks and Tamburins

Juju and Lilo both shook bells along to Jingle Bells and Ju sang most of the lyrics too. As I just found out from this site, Jingle Bells, one of the most famous Christmas songs, was originally written for Thanksgiving in 1857. This is definitely one of Ju's favourite songs at the moment, along with When Santa got Stuck up the Chimney.

Bells were jingled and claves (two wooden sticks) were banged together in time with the Sleigh Ride by Ferrante & Teicher.

After the 45 minute class, there was a bit of free play for the children, and a cup of tea and biscuit for the mums. All in all, the boys had a great time and we definitely will be back. And we're so glad we got to practice our Christmas singing.

Clever Christmas Cards

Oops, we still haven't sent any Christmas cards! That explains why you haven't received yours. Today, we're getting on the case and making our own cards. The personal touch means you can customize them to the person whom you are sending them to. You don't need much to make your own cards, but it helps if you saved last year's Christmas cards. Below are some examples of the cards we made. They aren't all there, and we've still got to make some, so I will probably update this page in the next few days.

Recycled cards

What we used:

• coloured card
• pretty shiny Christmas papers
• Old Christmas cards - cut out interesting motifs from them - I find that you can't easily re-use already handmade cards, although they can still be used for making present tags.
• snowflake hole puncher
• ribbon
• glue, scissors
• glitter glue, glitter
• sequins

Recycled cards Ju made this morning

More recycled cards

Snowflake cards

For the snowflake card at the top, I got instructions for making a snowflake from a great site, but unfortunately I didn't bookmark it (sorry!) so can't point you to it*. However, I have since found a page with patterns for making Star Wars snowflakes.... I know... My geeky friends will be getting those for Christmas. Anyway, cutting a weird pattern in a piece of paper that has been folded 6 times is a bit tricky for my 3 year old, so I did the cutting. Unfolding the paper to reveal the snowflake was quite a magical moment. We then glued the snowflake onto a card and made some snowflake holes using the hole puncher.

* [update: ...Or can't I? It turns out I had actually pinned it on my Christmas Craft Pinterest board so actually, here is this very well described tutorial on snowflakes, in case your friends aren't sci-fi geeks and you're looking for something a bit more traditional.]

For the next snowflake card, Ju cut snowflakes out using the snowflake hole puncher and glued them on to a card with some pretty paper and ribbon

Angel cards

We made these on Day 11 of our activity countdown, when we made our pretty snowy landscapes. Check out our blog entry on that day to see how we made them.

Right, and now, down to the write stuff...