Family advent calendar: Day 3-5

Day 3: Letters to Santa.

It was a bit of a struggle to build my kid's enthusiasm for this activity. I definitely need to work on my advertising pitch and perfecting my timing of activities a bit more for my two munchkins. Nonetheless as a grumpy momma I plowed through with the idea, prompting them to provide me with the contents of the letter. Thankfully, they seemed to enjoy decorating the cards with stickers and foamy pieces.

The letters are as follows:

Hi Santa,
My name is *. I am 2 years old. I want a horsey for Christmas, a pink horsey.
Thank you,
*

Hi Santa,
My name is *. I am four. I'm going to be at Grandpa and Grandma's for Christmas. I'm going to leave a snack for your reindeer in the snow by the apple tree. Could you bring me a present for Christmas? I would like a Ming-Ming the Wonder Pet stuffed animal and a car that lights up but no sounds.
Have a good Christmas,
*

Day 4: Pick out Christmas books at the library for us to read.

As always the library continues to be a favourite outing for the kids. The Christmas selection of books at our library was significantly picked over. Everyone must have had the same idea as myself. The three bays of shelving held a scant 15 books. We came home with four and so far the favourite is Spot's Magical Christmas (not necessarily my first choice).

Day 5: Paint Christmas ornaments

I chose to dig out this activity to keep us busy during that restless witching hour before dinner arrives on the table. Thankfully J was home to help...he chose to make dinner (mainly so he wouldn't have to agonize over the mess the kids would undoubtedly create). The kids donned their smocks/aprons and plastered a couple of wooden ornaments with paints. My kids are free spirits when it comes to crafts. I have really tried not to put parameters on where or in what manner to paint, colour or draw. Yet tonight a little assistance was needed. I wiped off monkey boy's first attempt at painting the ornament when I realized he was just using it as a palette for mixing colours. We then worked together to sort-of paint in the lines. Lil bug patiently put up with my holding her hand to paint but was delighted when she could just freehand paint on paper and play in the water bowl. After a period of soaking the newspaper with water and getting paint up to their elbows, we put the paints away for another day. This was a great activity. Both the kids and I had fun just being creative and messy.

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