Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Advent Book Activity: Dream Snow & Snowflake ornaments

On Monday evening the boys and I did our first advent book activity. You can read about the concept behind these activities in this post. First we decided which boy would get to open which "paper". We decided my oldest boy will open the books in polka-dot paper and my little boy will open the ones in green striped paper. The boy who doesn't open a book will get to pull the activity description out of the felt stockings (Scroll down in this post to see a photo of the stockings. We are just using 15 this year instead of all 25.) Below is a photo of our advent books all wrapped and ready.







Tonight we opened the book Dream Snow by Eric Carle. This is a brand new book for our family. I bought it after Christmas last year at Barnes and Noble, 50% off. It's a great little story with awesome illustrations. I LOVE Eric Carle!!







We made glass snowflake ornaments to go with this book. In my original post back in July I had a link to a specific project from Michael's that inspired our ornaments. The only adhesive backed snowflakes I could find at Hobby Lobby (much closer for me to shop at than Michael's) were multi-colored. I had envisioned using all white but couldn't find a package like that. I picked up 2 glass ornaments with another bonus ornament at my favorite thrift store for 75 cents. Can't beat that price!! So...........our materials were: glass ornaments, foam adhesive-backed snowflakes, and ribbon for hanging the ornaments. I had some snowflake ribbon in my stash. Perfect!




This was a quick and simple ornament to make. The boys were both successful and were excited to go downstairs and hang them on our $3 garage sale tree which has been reserved especially for our advent book ornaments.





Below you can see our finished ornaments. They look so pretty and definitely spruce up a previously bare tree. Just last night I was thinking I'd like to somehow turn images of the book covers from each book we read into ornaments. My wheels are turning on that one. I think that would look really cool. I'm sure Modge Podge will be involved in this project in some way. If you have any thoughts, let me know!








6 comments:

Brandy said...

We open "present" books at our house, too. My kids love it. :)

Jocelyn Christensen said...

You inspired me to do our own book advent activities with my 4, 2, and 1 year olds! Day 1 was really fun...thanks so much for the idea!

...check out our stuff at http://beinglds.blogspot.com/

Demarcus Family said...

thanks for the inspiration! I love this and look forward to more posts!

Jamie said...

I remember you making these back a few months ago, summer? and I thought at the time, 'what a great idea but surely I'll have time to do it in December' ha! YOU ARE BRILLIANT!

We open books but don't have any activities to go along with them that are planned. I'm going to write down the titles of our books this winter and go to work this summer. What a great idea (and time to do it). :)

I was wondering if you were going to do a gift idea post this year? I loved your ideas and things your kids loved last year-we didn't get everything, but a good portion of what you posted and love it.

Happy Holidays! I hope you have a wonderful Christmas season. :)

Anna said...

I love this idea of advent books. I have not read this Eric Carle book yet, I will have to find it. The snowflake ornaments turned out really cute!

Anonymous said...

Laura, for ornaments with images from the book covers, use old cds/dvds. You can hot glue paper or cardstock to the labe side if you wish, sandwiching in a paper clip for attaching a hanger or ribbon, and then mod podge the picture onto the paper, the other side will be shiny and can also be embellished with sequins and glitter if you want it shinier (they say that I was a magpie in a former life). I have done this in the past with dark blue cardstock and had the kids make handprint snowmen, this year I think they will just decorate the cardstock as they wish with various shiny stuff.