Tot School – Christmas (35 months)

Alex gets it!  He gets it in the most basic way, but the fact that he understands brings me a lot of joy!  We went out for breakfast yesterday with Grandma and Grandpa, saw a Christmas display, talked about Santa, and stopped in a few stores.  As we were getting out of the car at a store, I said something about how Christmas isn’t about Santa or presents, it’s about celebrating…

Alex looked at me and said, “Jesus Being Born!”

And THAT’S what thrilled me!  He knows what Christmas is really all about.  I haven’t been drilling it into his head, but that’s what we’ve read about and talked about as we’ve worked on Tot School in the past 2 weeks.

We’re reading lots of Christmas stories together, and here’s some of the fun we’ve had recently:

We made red and green Christmas playdough (cinnamon and peppermint scented) with Grace.  The kids helped with the measuring, did all the stirring, and (of course) left the cooking part to me.

After that, we pulled out all the Christmas-shaped cookie cutters and had a good time!

Alex chose to do this on other days, too.  This playdough is getting a workout!

Alex & I are working through a printable book from Musings of Me.  This first page is about the angel Gabriel visiting Mary.  Alex and I read the story from his children’s Bible, then we made this angel with coffee filter wings – loosely inspired by an angel that I saw on the Hubbard’s Cupboard website. We marble painted Christmas trees with Grace.

We did several different magnet pages – Santa, Ornament, and a few others – with both magnets and dot markers.  (See?  There’s a little Santa fun thrown in the mix!)

  

We did the people/animals nativity sort from Carisa’s Christmas printables.

So, Jesus is on top of the shepherd, Mary is upside-down, and the pig is kind of borderline human, but he got the concept! ;)

 

And, for this post, the last thing is this pre-writing skills page from Carisa’s Nativity printables (link above).  It’s not perfect, but he’s getting the hang of following the lines.  I’m pleased with this for an almost-3 year old.

   

In the coming week, I’d like to finish the Christmas book that we’re making and read the Legend of the Candy Cane, let Alex eat his first candy cane, and perhaps make candy cane cookies.  We’ll do some other fun stuff, too, I’m sure, but those are my main goals.

Be sure to check the 1+1+1=1 website to see what others tots are doing!