Hey guys,

I hope you have a good time with your loved ones! ❤️

A few weeks ago, I thought that this year there will be 0 activities on Christmas theme, but after all, we managed to do some. Still, I will share those with you next time.

For now, I thought I'd share some of our fun times together as a family. And of course, the ones that I think have at least a bit of an educational role... so to speak.

Winter is still ahead of us and as it happened in the last few years, Winter now comes in late January, rather than early December, as it was used to be 20 yrs ago. Strange .... (~~or not?~~) ha!!

Anayways, I don't regret not having the time or the mood to work with my son games, activities, worksheets or whatever Christmas theme related. Maybe next year will be different.
Although I consider it a success that we did a few activities related to what Christmas really means for us, and that would be the Birth of Jesus. (I'll be posting these tmr, I hope).
We'll be learning more about Winter in the few weeks.

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Learning can be FUN! Who says learning always have to be in a formal environment? Learning surely doesnt mean just worksheets, plans, museums, school, etc.

Kids learn just by doing day by day basic stuff and activities! The ones we consider unimportant, those are actually the ones that help them grow!! Like cooking together, cleaning up together, laughing together, talking with each other, gardening, going to the park.

So basically, the normal life of a family is the best that is in order for kids to grow and become independent. And this is what I consider doing with my son here.
Ordinary things that seems meaningless for their growing and development, but if we look closely, this is not true at all.

Christmas Tree

First, there is the Christmas tree. 🎄

I wasnt sure if to do it this year or not. But then I thought that it would be selfish of me to take the joy that my son had decorating the tree. And seeing all those lights! Ohh now I'm so happy I decided to to take it out of storage and use it. My son's expression was priceless when he saw the lights and the globes! He was thrilled to put his little hands on everything!

We decorated the tree together. As you can see, it's not a real tree, but we have it and for this year was perfect! (Well, we used it in the last 3 years haha). Still, I found it cute enough when there's no time, energy or mood for a really Christmas Tree.

My son helped decorating our tree. We used some of the decorations we hand crafted the last two years. I think this was a moment for my son to use his imagination, creativity, dexterity, hand eye coordonation and fine motor skills. Well, solving problems skills were in game as he had to find ways to climb up and put some globes higher. The chair and the couch were the ones that helped. 😜

Not to mention that he knocked over the tree 2 times already and that half of the globes flew around the house. We had to put them back. Some of them broke...🤣😫🙄

We had some company! 😍🐱

What do you think? Our Loki male cat helped in too! Hohohoh! 😅

Gingerbread making together

Well, this is not new. I already posted our first experience making gingerbread together.

HERE is the link, in case you want to take a look.

This year it was a bit different. Besides the part of rolling dough and play with it, use the cookie cutter shapes, doing also a lot of mess and so on ... (what he actually did when he was not even two), This year he was more active, involved in making gingerbread from scratch.

This year he helped with making the dough and measure all ingredients. He even cut the butter using a non-sharp knife. I let him do everything he felt he's ready to and it came out really nice! He did an amazing job for a four year old.

Of course, everything he did was supervised and I helped in. BUT, from what I can compare two years ago, this year was something else.

I'll leave you some of the photos I took during the process.

Making gingerbread is a good experience for little kids, when they're in "hands-on" phase. meaning they learn while they touch objects and stuff. Also it helps developing practical life skills and cooking skills.

Including our children in daily activies as a family , their sense of responsability will grow.

This time I bought a set of Letters Cookie Cutter Shapes. My son was super excited. He arranged them from A to Z, as you can see in the picture below. And was thrilled to use them. I was not! HAHAHA. Because they were kind of small and I think it was a bit harder to get some nice gingerbread letters shapes. It was hard to take the dough out of them. But overall, it was OK.

We ended up using some other cookie cutter shapes, much bigger.

DIY Ornaments

And last, here they are! Our lovely DIY Globes. I think they are so beautiful!

Fine motor skills at work, ladies and gentlemens!

I think two or three crafts are perfect (and enough) for one season, if there's no chance for more than this. Better few than nothing, right?

We also worked on these CHRISTMAS HANDMADE CARDS, so there's one more to add! 😁

We had this beautiful, glitter and colorful spongy paper. I thought this is perfect for some globes to hang them on our tree.

We cut them in small pieces. He was excited as I keep mention here he's in love with cutting paper and things...

Then I cut some cardboard circle shaped, add some glue and let the kid do the work.

Books

One thing I'm grateful for is my time spent with Caleb reading books.

And I'm more grateful that my son likes books as much as I do. I think books have a huge role for kids development. And I think reading your kid is one of the best things you can do.

Kids get to learn so much from books. Actually most of what Caleb knows, is from books. He can stay hours next to me, while I read loud and clear. Unfortunately, I get tired after an hour so...but we have Reading time everyday.

And if we dont have time in the day to read, there's no way my son goes to sleep without reading him at least one book. Usually they are 2-3-4. Depending how long the book is. Still, what I try to say is that the sooner you start reading books to your child, the better. It will sharpen his mind, his brain, his thinking and in the future, he would stay focus for longer periods of time. Reading and learning would come easily for these kids..

We have some books related to Christmas only. And we have another ones on Winter topic.

Here are some pictures I just took for you, to show you our book collection for the season. It is still on growing year by year.