Gingerbread house

This was the completed masterpiece made my myself and my eldest (4yrs). 

We bought a kit from the supermarket that included the ingredients to make the gingerbread and cardboard templates for the house. 

We made up the mixture and baked the gingerbread. When it was baked (smelt soo yummy!) 

we used the templates to cut out the house structure. It was alittle tricky to get to stick together with the royal icing but we found alittle extra is ok as it can be disguised as snow anyway :) 

Doing this kept A's attention for ages and it was lovely to spent quality time, working together.

She loved decorating the house and we made the trees from some leftover gingerbread from the house template. Getting them to stay upright was even trickier!! 

This house was admired for many days before we finally reluctantly dismantled it. Eating the yummy Gingerbread numbed the pain though :)

Biscuit Christmas decorations.

A simple activity decorating star shaped biscuits proved very popular. We added a hole to the top of the biscuits with a straw so that when cooked we could add some ribbon to hang them on the tree.
We actually made quite a few but some got nibbled during the decorating!
These could make fab gifts for people too.

Snowman soup

Every year it gets harder thinking of things to make for teacher gifts. This Christmas I stumbled across the idea of Snowman Soup on Pinterest. You are basically giving the ingredients for a lovely hot chocolate drink.
We started by making our own marshmallows. These were relatively easy to do - And VERY yummy! :)

This is the recipe I used : http://www.rivercottage.net/recipes/home-made-marshmallows/

In our packets we added our marshmallows, a sachet of hot chocolate, Chocolate spoons (here) and a stencil for sprinkling coco powder on the top.

I made up the little labels on the top and added them to the top of the bag. 

The nursery staff seemed to really like their gifts and appreciated the thought and effort that had gone into making them. 

If your not feeling creative in making the labels then their are quite a few freebie templates online if you search for Snowman soup.

Elf on the shelf

I thought id share the girls favourite thing in the lead up to Christmas. For those of you who haven't heard of this before ill explain it in a nutshsell.
The little elf is sent from Father Christmas at the beginning of December. He comes to watch over the children to make sure they are behaving and staying on the nice list. He's no ordinary elf though! He has magical powers and can come alive at night. He flies back to Father Christmas every night to report back on their behaviour. He's a little cheeky though and gets into all sorts of mischief on his return. He can often be found in the morning hiding or doing something a little mischievous!

Ive been blogging his actions here
http://elfyescapades.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/elf-on-shelf.html

Take a look and see what he's been up to! The girls get so excited to find him in the mornings! :)

Halloween crafts and party.

The girls and some friends really enjoyed these halloween crafts.
We started with Spider handprints. Very simply its two hand prints together (wrists touching). Only attempt both hands at the same on older children or it gets very messy! :)
We then added some googly eyes to finish off our friendly spiders.

Next we attempted ghost leaves. These had limited success with these as the leaves soon started to curl up at the edges. They were still enjoyable to make and looked super cute. An ideal craft for young trick or treaters as they arent scary.

Take a trip to the woods/park or even just along the side of the road. We actually collected these leaves during the walk home from Nursery. 

Then simply paint them white and with a black pen draw on your ghouls eyes and mouth. I used very fine sewing thread to hang them up as its not so easy to see making your ghosts really seem to fly.

These crafts made fab decorations for our Halloween party! I also make bunting from black craft paper and simply painting the letters on with white paint, and spooky ghosts from large white sheets of craft paper and gluing them to the windows. The looked very effective... especially as it got dark.

The girls invited some friends round for some halloween crafts and games.
They all dressed up and had a fab time! All the children enjoyed the craft activity of paper plate ghosts. This was my proto-type to show the children an example.

These were simple to make, although require abit of pre planning if theres a few children. Your ghost will need a paper plate, some arms cut from white card, white crepe paper cut into long strips and pens to draw your ghosts features.

 

As you can see the children loved their ghosts and many drew nice smiley, happy ghosts.

For our party we also had halloween food. This cake was made from a bundt tin. I split the batter into smaller pots and added food colouring to make a marble effect inside. Sadly the cake went too quickly and before I got chance to take a photo of the inside! The topping is  different coloured icing, microwaved for a few seconds to make it runny and then drizzled over the top. Simple but effective.

 These marshmallows were very popular too. I bought a black edible icing pen (which is as it sounds! A pen using edible ink) and used it to draw little ghost faces.

More Handprint cards

The grandparents love nothing more than a handprint card for their birthdays. They appreciate the effort, time and love that has gone into the making of the cards. Plus its also a great way for the children to get involved and enjoy an art activity.

This owl card was very popular with Nanny!

And GreatNanny loved her handprint tree.

Farm yard Holabaloo!

The girls love playing with their toy farm and to take it to another level, we added some Hay into the mix. The black tray was perfect for containing any wayward strands of hay. Alternatively you could take it outside to help with any mess.
The girls enjoyed making little beds with the Hay for the animals and pretending the animals were eating it. They also commented on the smells and textures of the hay so its also a sensory activity too.