The cutting tray we did a couple months back was such a hit, that I knew I wanted to do another one, but this time around, a holiday themed one! Just like last time, most of our cutting materials were things we already had around the house – so no need to go and purchase anything new. In fact, I look at this as a perfect time to use up some scraps we’ve no idea what to do with.
After decorating gingerbread houses this morning, this afternoon I whipped up a batch of delicious-smelling and amazingly soft gingerbread play dough for Miss G to play with.
In addition to the play dough, I set out several things create gingerbread people with, including a rolling pin, cookie cutters, buttons, straw pieces, jingle bells, ribbon bits, and toothpicks.
Gracen dove in as she usually does and the play dough gingerbread people began rolling out of the kitchen.
She came up with so many fun ways to decorate them, some more traditional, and some a little more abstract…
The best part is that this dough smells so amazing that you sometimes forget that it’s just play dough and not actual gingerbread baking in the oven. ☺
♥
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For the last few days, Gracen’s been working on these sweet little nature wreaths at her creative table.
It started out as a very simple painting station with a few cardboard o’s and some paint in different shades of green.
When the paint was dry, I added a few other things into the mix… Glue, mini pinecones, bits of evergreen tree, and dried out red berries from her autumn nature shelf.
Though this creative table set-up didn’t take off quite like the paper christmas tree one did, it’s been something that she’s come back to each day. She’ll spend a little bit of time adding to one of her wreaths, move onto something else, and come back another time.
This morning, after walking past the wreath on our door, she asked if she could have some bows for her wreaths, so I brought out my glue gun, cut up some ribbon, and added a few to the table.
After adding her bow, she put on the finishing touches…
And voila! A beautiful little Christmas wreath made of things {mostly} found outdoors.
♥
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As much as I’d love to have an entire room dedicated to play and discovery, our little two bedroom house simply doesn’t have the space. So instead of an actual playroom, we’ve taken various playroom elements and created play spaces around the house so that Gracen always has plenty of opportunities to create, explore, and play. If you were to visit our house, you’d most likely see some sort of sensory tray or bin happening in our kitchen, an easel and art supplies in our dining area, a felt board station, creative table, and toy area in the living room, and a nature shelf, dress-up corner, and book nook in Gracen’s room. This set up works really well for us and the nice part is that if I’m making dinner or folding a load of laundry or doing some sort of other job, Gracen always has the choice of doing a project or activity of her own in the same room.
One of the areas Gracen’s especially taken interest in lately is her creative table. All it is a regular kid-sized table and chair set, but the fun part is that new creating materials find their way onto the table every few days. Some days the materials are really simple (something like card stock, stickers, and crayons, or paper, stamps, and ink pads), and other days the materials are a little more exciting (sparkly pipe cleaners and shiny pony beads, or chocolate play dough, gingerbread man-shaped cookie cutters, and buttons). I almost always put out new materials while Miss G’s asleep, and I leave them for her to discover on her own. Though I don’t actively encourage her to engage in the activities at her creative table (they’re more of an ongoing invitation to create), she almost always squeals in delight upon finding something new and gets creating right away.
This invitation to decorate paper Christmas trees was a HUGE hit today. So much so that she ended up creating seven different trees and took her time with each, creating seven unique masterpieces.
Last night, I sliced my finger open {after my very favourite ever vintage mixing bowl fell from our infamous mountain of clean, drying dishes and shattered all over the floor *sob*}. As I shuffled through our catch-all closet to retrieve the first aid kit, I stumbled upon a giant bag of forgotten about epsom salt. And that’s how this random little sensory activity began. ☺
Having used regular salt {on trays} for drawing and letter printing practice in my classroom many times before, I knew that epsom salt would be just as fun. But to amp it up a little and make it more festive, we decided to turn out plain old epsom salt into the candy cane variety with a little peppermint extract and food colouring.
Of course my little helper did most of the work.
To get started, we measured out a couple of cups of epsom salt into a zip-close bag (you could easily use a jar instead – it just requires a little more shaking power).
Then we added a spoonful of peppermint extract. And because this was the white batch, zipped up the bag tightly…
And shook it up.
We repeated the process twice more, this time adding food colouring into the mix. The end result was a tray of minty fresh, candy cane-coloured epsom salt just begging for little hands to play with it.
I gathered up a few spoons and some silicon muffin cups, and Miss G retrieved some Christmas cookie cutters.
Then she got to playing.
First up was making “pucktakes” (cupcakes according to our silly little girl).
Of course pucktakes need candies and cherries on top, so off she went to collect some buttons.
This simple little sensory station kept her happily engaged while I made dinner and washed a big load of dishes, plus our whole kitchen smelled deliciously of peppermint.
And the fun didn’t stop there… When bath time rolled around, Miss G picked her very favourite epsom salt cupcake to take along with her.
(The really neat part is that if you let the salt sit in the silicon cups overnight, they harden and become little pucks that are easily portable to and from the bathtub.)
Last year, Miss G had her own wall-hung Christmas tree to made of felt. I won’t go into the grossness that is the fact that our garage is home to mice (or the fact that her little tree wasn’t properly packed away), but needless to say, the tree is no longer.
Since Grae’s really been enjoying her felt board games lately, and since I have other plans for the little chunk of wall that held last year’s tree, I decided to make her a smaller Christmas tree felt board set this time around.
All it took was a big sheet of green felt (available in craft stores) cut free hand in the shape of a tree, a brown felt stump attached to the base of the tree with fabric glue (hot glue or craft glue would work just fine too), some ornaments cut from bright coloured felt, and a yellow star to top the tree.
And since Grae had a really nice long nap and I had finished all of the other pieces, I decided to cut out a couple of presents for her to place under the tree too.
Now she has a {new} little tree that can decorate again and again all by herself, regardless of the time of year.
See our other felt board ideas, as well as a tutorial on how to make your own easy felt board here.
♥
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