We've been busy preparing for Christmas in our home! I love this season so its such a joy to be able to incorporate Christmas crafts and activites into our daily homeschool time! My only complaint is that December is just not long enough to pack everything into it that I would like! Let me share with you some of the things we have gotten around to!

Besides adding an ornament to the tree on our family Advent calendar each day, I also set up individual Advent charts for the girls to add stickers to after breakfast each morning. It has 24 different shapes on it so each day I tell Piper a shape and she has to find it to put her star sticker on! Taitum obviously is free to put her stickers wherever and they have all ended up on the baby Jesus at the bottom! Both girls are so excited to add their sticker each day! There are also other options besides shapes for these charts that you can find at Hubbard's Cupboard Christmas.

We took a couple days to make angels, the first being a Hand and Footprint Angel. Getting to put paint all over your hands is always a big hit in our house so the girls had a great time with this! Plus they got to share this craft time with some friends, making it even better!

On another day, Piper made a Shape Angel. It was a good way to talk about different shapes during craft time and she was overjoyed about being allowed to use glitter!!

Piper and I got down to buisness making our Christmas cards. We used potato stamps, something I've been wanting to try for a while. I had never thought about using a cookie cutter to cut the shape you want in the potato. I always thought you had to carve the design yourself and I don't know about you but my potato carving skills aren't that great! Then when browsing through some craft sites I came across some Christmas card ideas! After deciding on trying the potato stamps, I went looking for cookie cutters that were small enough. I found some at Michael's and really debated between the $9 metal ones and the $3 plastic ones. Ever frugal, I of course went for the plastic but was very afraid that they wouldn't be sharp enough to cut the potato well. In the end, they worked out perfectly! We worked on quite a few and then hung them on an impromptu clothesline in the kitchen. I like the look of it hanging there so much, I'm considering replacing the cards with something decorative rather then taking the line down! As well, I am hoping to try some of the other card making ideas next week on the ones we have left to create!

We spent a day talking about how Jesus is the Light of the world. On that day, Piper made a toilet paper roll candle like the one from the Christmas plan at Hubbard's Cupboard.

We also have been continuing to work on shapes. I printed these off for the Christmas Tot Pack and we played 'shape hunt' one day. Here Piper is looking at a shape and getting ready to go off and find something in the house that has the same shape. I don't have any pics of the hunt as I was right in there with her (have you ever tried to find something triangular in your house??!) but I can tell you it was a lot of fun!

Finally, I tried a color-by-number nativity with Piper (I added the number/color key myself). This was another activity that she needed some assistance with but overall, I believe she got the concept. I cut it out and she glued the pieces together and added the glitter!

Well, this has been our week! I hope that some of our activities inspire you to get creative with your kiddos (or yourself! Crafts are for 'big kids', too!). What fun crafts or activities are you doing? Is there anything that you do traditionally every year?