Canvas Art Decorations

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I meant to publish this on Christmas Eve for anyone looking for a last minute craft, but I ended up leaving my camera at my in-laws and have been enjoying family time, so here it is now. It isn't too late to make canvas art for this year. It would still capture the itty bitty hands or feet of your little one to admire next year. This would also be a great activity for any time of year, or to celebrate another special date, just pick a theme that would fit that date or time of year. 

Last Christmas I wanted to make something with Skyler that we could use as part of our future holiday decorations. On Christmas Day, we ended up painting his tiny six month old feet and making "mistle-toes" on a canvas. I finished the canvas with some ribbon and glitter paint. I loved the finished product and it makes me so happy every time I see it on our mantle this year. I decided that it was going to be a tradition of ours to decorate a canvas (at least until we run out of space for any more).

Skyler was thrilled with having his feet painted, as you can tell!

Since we did feet prints last year, we went with a hand print inspired canvas! I originally was going to do a wreath, but then we did the cut out wreaths for our door and window, so reindeer it was!

Excited to get started!

I wanted to try something different with Skyler, so I attempted to trace his hands on the canvas, but he didn't love it, so I pulled him onto my lap and we traced them onto paper. It was easier for him to see, and then it was alright if we messed them up a bit.

I traced the cut out hands onto the canvas lightly with pencil. Then I outlined and filled in the hands with a light brown colored pencil. I love the Color Sticks from Crayola for Skyler because they have no wood, so he can easily color with them and they come in a ton of colors. After coloring in the hands, I added some ears, tails and antlers.

The next part of our canvas was to decorate the background. Skyler got to open a Christmas present a day early - paint dabbers! We have used them a lot at ECFE class and he has seemed to enjoy using them, so it was time to get him some of his own. Skyler used a blue dot marker to make snow falling from the sky. Then we added some snowflake sequins that I swiped out from our "snow" sensory bin. I wrote his name and the year and drew some small snowflakes in dark blue, since the sequins are not really visible from all angles, it added some extra snow to the sky.

Here is our second annual multimedia canvas art.

This activity has been fun to do with part of the work done by baby and part of the work done by mama, but in years to come, it will be even better to see Skyler creating his own masterpiece. 

Handmade Ornaments

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As a kid, my favorite thing to open on Christmas morning was my ornament. Even still, ornaments are one of my favorite things to get. They are so special and capture special moments in time. I love to look back on the ornaments I have received, and being able to put them on my own tree this year was a lot of fun (the very very non-breakable ones!)

Last year for Skyler, I bought him an ornament (or two...whoops) and we made an ornament. I wanted to recreate that this year and have both a gift and handmade ornaments.

Last year, we got him this hand painted ornament and this hand stamped leaf 

 

And we made a simple salt dough hand print ornament for his first Christmas. 

This year, my baby boy is obsessed with anything vehicle related. We read books, play with, and watch out the window for anything that moves! So, for his second Christmas, I bought him a sweet train ornament and had it personalized. We got it from the General Store of Minnetonka.

I saw these Tissue Paper Mosaic Ornaments from Happy Hooligans, and knew Skyler would love to make them! We followed all the steps from the link, except we decorated whimsical trees instead of circles.

Skyler did really well with layering the tissue paper, but it was still a team effort. I helped him by using glue stick as he went along with the paper. He tried to paint on the glue, but it was pretty tough, so I ended up painting a coat of glitter glue on after he was done playing with the sticky fun!

These are our finished trees. They will get a hole punch and some ribbon, and be up on our tree by Christmas. We were going to make some for Skyler's cousins, but these two took awhile. We are going to bring our extra trees, tissue paper, and glitter glue along Christmas Day so the three cousins can have craft time together.

They make beautiful sun catchers

And are incredibly sparkly!

What We Do All Day

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"What do you do all day?" I get that question a lot when I tell people I am a full time mama. On a typical day we will spend some of our time out and about at classes or activities, running errands, or at play dates.

Skyler usually wakes up around 7:00, we get ready and typically eat breakfast at home. In the morning is when we do most of our activities out of the house, but we always come home to read books and for a nap. While Skyler naps, I will prepare activities, get dinner started, clean, do laundry, and read some blogs or watch an episode of a TV show online if I have time! When he gets up from a 2-3 hour nap is usually when we do activities at home, but sometimes we will run errands or go to a class. We start getting him ready for bed around 6:30 after dinner, we will do a bath and books and he will be in bed by 7:00. Days as a full time mama are full, fun, and so rewarding. 

These are some activities that we did this week.

Monday morning we had ECFE class. Skyler's favorite things are the sensory table, which changes frequently, any vehicle toys (currently the little tug boat), usually he makes a craft, and that day he enjoyed watching a snow plow outside (and he apparently watched out the window much of the 45 minutes I was in the parent education classroom!)

Tuesday morning we were at Kindermusik class. This week was a special holiday party and the little one's got pulled around in laundry basket 'sleighs' and we had a snowball fight which inspired our all white sensory bin (I added some extra snowballs to keep our friends anonymous!). Skyler's favorite part of music class is using instruments, especially the drums, though he really enjoys the entire hour. We also take home CD's, books, and instruments twice throughout the sixteen week session and he chooses those materials often when we play at home. This is the third music class we have taken, and is his favorite.

On Wednesday evening, Skyler has swimming class. We have had Skyler in swimming classes since March, and he absolutely loves them. He has learned a lot of skills in the water, but we are taking a break from them since he would be repeating the same class for the third time because of his age. I think we will start these back up in the summer, when he can move up a level.

Thursday we had to do some Christmas shopping at the Mall of America. We needed two things, and ended up spending most of our time finding fun things for a toddler to explore! Skyler loved feeling the bumpy Lego pictures, like this moose, at Lego Land and checking out the big sculptures. We stopped in at the Disney store to color a Christmas themed mask in their little kid craft area, and we spent some time in Barnes and Noble reading books after picking up a gift. Part of the gift we bought was for a Christmas party that afternoon at my mom's in-home daycare (where we go frequently for Skyler to have some play time with little buddies).

Friday my poor guy had a high fever and was not feeling well, so we stayed home that day, and he slept a lot. When he was awake, we played with his new sensory bin, read books, and snuggled!

 

We were excited to have a weekend with few plans, and decided to do a trip to the Minnesota Zoo. It is one of our favorite places to go, and Skyler always enjoys it. This was the first trip to the zoo since Skyler started walking and it was fun to have him set the pace, choosing how long to stay at each exhibit. We spent the most amount of time at the monkey and penguin exhibits and the aquarium. He was so exhausted by the end of our trip, I thought he might fall asleep in the stroller as we walked to the car, but he lasted until we started driving. He was asleep before we made it out of the parking lot!

Today we took a trip to another favorite place, the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. Skyler was gifted with a sled at the Christmas party we attended. I knew I wanted to take him to the arboretum to try it out. He had so much fun (and I am looking forward to using the sled to resume daily walks around our neighborhood). In the summer and fall we were going to the arboretum at least once a week. They do story time for little one's and always have beautiful decorations and sculptures to look at. We headed inside after sledding to look at the huge poinsettia and other decorated Christmas trees. 

Skyler loved this little Santa, saying "Hi, Santa!" and waving, and then gave a "Beep!" on his nose!

 

Another popular game was pressing the buttons and watching them light up on the map of the arboretum. Skyler even lit up the garden where his mama and daddy were married!

In the afternoon we went to a special holiday party at the Kindermusik studio. Skyler liked having daddy come along and showing him all of the things he is learning. I always tell Joe how much Skyler loves the class, and he thought I was exaggerating. He couldn't believe how excited Skyler was for all of the activities he gets to do in the class. This was his second time trying out the piano.

A lot of these activities, like swimming class or our trip to the arboretum, are only around half an hour, but it is nice to get out of the house and give Skyler many opportunities to learn new things and explore his surroundings.

This was an especially busy week for us, but it was a lot of fun! The extra music class was a first and we almost always have more plans for the weekend. Luckily, Skyler was feeling better throughout the weekend and was able to enjoy the time out with our family of three. We had been planning on the arboretum Saturday afternoon and trying to make it to the Macy's Santaland in downtown Minneapolis this morning, but Skyler's fever was back briefly on Saturday when we were leaving the zoo. Our next week will be just about as busy with all of the Christmas festivities, and then in the following weeks I think we will have some time to relax.

"Snow" Sensory Bin

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We had holiday parties in our music class the past two weeks. Part of the class was a 'snow fight' with big white puff balls. Skyler giggled and smiled while the music played and the snow balls were thrown around. He would stoop down, pick up a handful and toss them in every direction. To recreate this at home, I went to find the most fluffy white yarn I could. I used it to make pom poms, but because of the thickness of the yarn, it ended up more like a sphere of snow - perfect! I added in some other snowy items, and we had an all white, sensory bin that can be described with many sensory words!

For this sensory bin I found extremely fluffy white yarn, a thinner white yarn, Styrofoam balls, and snowflake sequins.

 

To make the pom poms, I wrapped the thicker yarn 25 times around two or three fingers and the thinner yarn 35 or 60 times around two fingers, which produced varying sizes of each of the yarns. I ended up using the entire skein of the fluffy yarn, and most of the thinner yarn. 

I slid the wrapped yarn off of my fingers and tied an additional piece of yarn around the center, knotting it tightly. 

 

The next step is to slid the scissor through half of the loops and cut them, and then repeat on the other half of loops.

With the thick yarn I rolled the completed ball around in my hand like a snow ball and then went around the ball to trim off pieces that stuck out. With the thinner yarn, I didn't have to roll it around, I just snipped off the pieces that were obviously longer.

The completed bin with both types of pom poms, foam balls, and sequins.

There are many descriptive words I use when talking to Skyler about the objects in his sensory bin, even though they are all "white snow"

The pom poms are fluffy, soft, and fuzzy.

The foam balls are round, rough, bumpy, and hard.

The sequins are smooth, shiny, sparkly, and Skyler thinks they are "pretty!"

With a high fever, my poor guy was not feeling his best today. We had a pajama (and 'soothie' actually came out from the crib!) day. It was a good time to bring out a new sensory bin. He carefully felt all of the different items, especially liking the sequins. After exploring for a bit, he knew what to do with the pom poms and soon our room was filled just as it was at music class. 

Skyler enjoyed playing with this today, and I am excited to use it with him when he is back to his smiley and talkative self. I think this bin will be a popular item in our house throughout the holidays.

Jingle Bells

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The idea for these simple jingle bell musical shakers came from our ECFE class. Skyler had a blast this week playing with one as the group sang "Jingle Bells." We had a couple of plastic lids on hand at home, so we went out to get some bells to make some of our own and have had so much fun with these! The shakers in our class used a hole punch, which would be a great way of doing it so older children could string the bells around the lid. I used a knife to cut sets of two slits around the plastic lid and did the stringing of the bells.

All that you will need to make the jingle bell musical shakers is plastic lids (one of ours was from happy tot puffs and the other was from a yogurt container), ribbon, bells, and tape (put on the end of the ribbon helped to string through the slits on the lid).

Skyler and I had a dance party to "Jingle Bells" and some other Christmas songs when he woke up from his nap (our instruments made good hats as well!) Even though these handmade instruments are Christmas themed, I know he will enjoy playing with them year round.