Chilli goes to nursery!

Today the Aj's woke up to find Chilli sitting in the armchair reading a Christmas story!
After a bit of debate with Arthur and a mini meltdown, Arthur finally decided yes he did want to go to nursery, so off he went with Chilli in tow.  Chilli had great fun watching out for all the boys and girls and making sure they were good.  He also saw 'Bam Bam' the sheep and some of the other animals, as well as watching them make things for their Christmas boxes to take home with them.

Once home from nursery and a short walk with grandad, Arthur was very tired so we settled down and read some Christmas stories with Chilli for Day two of our advent activities. 

Chilli catching up on his reading!

Nursery 'Elfie'

'Elfie' with horse in neighboring field

'Elfie' with chickens at nursery

Reading with Chilli

"FATHER CHRISTMAS!!!'

Chilli the Elf and his advent fun!

Christmas has officially arrived over the weekend in this house!  We visited Father Christmas and his reindeer on Saturday, Arthur's first ever time, he wasn't totally sure what to do!  And on Saturday night the elves arrived to put up the Christmas tree, and Chilli remained behind to visit Arthur and Alyssa until Christmas Eve when Father Christmas returns  to collect him.  Everyday he likes to do a different activity, and hopefully will help remind the Aj's that they need to behave.  The idea is very popular thanks to The elf on the shelf, and I thought it would be a lovely way of getting Arthur excited about Christmas and be a great way of introducing different activities by having Chilli make the suggestion.  I also think it's great for his imagination to find Chilli in a different place/position every morning to help him believe Chilli comes alive every night!

So on the first day of Advent Arthur and Alyssa woke up to find Chilli and the Christmas tree had arrived, and he had brought with him a tree and some decorations for them to do with daddy during the day. Great fun was had apparently, Alyssa enjoyed the tinsel, and the baubles appeared all in a little cluster at the bottom, Arthur luckily hasn't realised some of them are chocolate yet!! A very creative effort though and such a simple idea for festive fun!

Yesterday Chilli was found building houses with the building blocks, and he wanted to create some snowy Christmas pictures, Arthur was unwell, so very quickly lost all enthusiasm for the activity, but did create some lovely pictures with the glue and the cotton wool whilst Chilli looked on!  Alyssa also enjoyed feeling the cotton wool, and stretching it and tasting it! Yuck!

I can't wait to see what else Chilli and the Aj's gets up to over the next few weeks!

Chilli Arrives!!

My little tinsel princess

Arthur's tree

Chilli the builder!

Snowy pictures!

Looking good!

Oooh!what's this soft squishy stuff??

Pilgrims picnic

To celebrate thanksgiving, we started the day pretending to be Native American Indians, using our Indian headbands we made recently, and the pop up tent became our Teepee.  I found some music on the internet and we danced around the 'camp' and banged on our drum.   Arthur enjoyed galloping around on his hobby horse, before hiding in the teepee crying 'the Indians are coming, quick hide!"  We also had a little mega blocks campfire built out of orange and yellow flames, but that didn't last long. 

Soon it was time for lunch and our Pilgrims picnic, I grabbed some of our teddies and put a few in little Pilgrim style hats, and laid out our Thanksgiving Dinner we made the other day.  Then I laid out some simple picnic food for use to eat.  It was great fun as we soon ate up, and were continuing our feast with our pretend food, endless amounts of chicken and cherry pie with Ice cream and custard were consumed before it was time to tidy up.  I thought I was being clever laying all the food out on an old curtain to make it easier to clean up, but once all the plates were removed Arthur took it as an ideal opportunity to whip the curtain up and down really fast making the crumbs and leftovers fly EVERYWHERE!!! But that wasn't the worst part of the day for me, that would have to be opening the door to a delivery guy dressed up like and Indian!! Queue slight embarresment, but the cries of 'lets play Indians' from Arthur were definitely worth it, and Alyssa seems to be following Arthur in his love of dressing up which is fantastic fun!

My Little Indian

Even mummy joined in!

Playing on the drums

My little Chief!

The teepee

Pilgrim Marley

A Pilgrims picnic for Thanksgiving

Talking with Marlene

Latkes for Hannukah

Whilst Alyssa was fast asleep and lunch time was fast approaching, Arthur and I attempted to make traditional Latkes to celebrate the Holiday of Hannukah.  It's the festival of lights for the Jewish community centred around the lighting of the Menorah and eating of fried foods representing the oil that burned for 8 days in the temple.  Donuts are a big thing for this festival, but I don't have a deep fat fryer to attempt to make these, so Latkes were the next best option. 

Latkes are a form of potato and onion pancake, served with apple sauce.  So our first task was to peel some potaotes, Arthur did try to have a go but couldn't quite do it.  But he thoroughly enjoyed pushing the button on the food processor, and squeezing as much water out of the grated potato as possible, before our next step of mixing all the ingredients together. 

Once they were cooked we served with some pureed apple, Alyssa and I thoroughly enjoyed them, but Arthur did the usual toddler trick of looking at it and saying "me no like it!" I can't wait for him to get over this stage, it is so frustrating!!

Attempting to peel

Pushing buttons

Squeezing

Mixing

Yum Yum!

The Aj's "Make" Thanksgiving dinner!

In preparation for Thursday, I got the two of them to help me "make" Thanksgiving dinner with the help of some felt tip pens, paper plates and some food magazines.  Arthur is really interested in learning how to use scissors, so I gave him a scrap of paper to practice on whilst I found some pictures in the magazines to cut out.  At the same time I gave Alyssa a plate with some basic carrot, potato and pea shapes on to colour in.  Arthur then got settled in helping me glue the pictures to the plates, the good thing about round paper plates is it doesn't matter which way they glue the picture down as it will always be the right way round!  The other great thing about these is if they remain in relatively good condition after Thursday, they can be used again and again for role play or imaginative play props.

Arthur cutting

Colouring carrotts

Sticking on a nice pie for dessert!

Thanksgiving dinner anyone??

Drawing salad

Christmas card making

This morning we had some fun with paint, making Christmas cards ready for when needed for Arthur's nursery friends.  We used a few different thumb, hand and foot printing techniques to try and create different Christmassy pictures.  I obviously guided Arthur a lot in order to create them, but then allowed his to have free play with the paint after, although he did get a bit over excited a couple of times and create some minor issues with a couple. such as an upside down reindeer and a big browny green blob that I haven't figured out how to salvage yet! (we only had a limited number of cards!!)

After lunch we then went on a lovely chilly walk to the park to play the swings, and take a walk through the woods and along the river.  Poor Arthur fell over in a big puddle, but luckily he was well wrapped up in waterproofs so didn't complain.

Alyssa getting creative

Christmas tree and fairy lights

Christmas tree and candy cane

Not quite sure yet!!

Arthur wanted to paint his own foot!

Reindeer and Father Christmas

A walk in the woods

A little bit muddy!!

Indians and toilet roll turkeys!

It has been a tough few days, with a house full of snot, especially me, I have had no energy in the evenings to update, so have taken a bit of a break.  We have had two hour walks, and fun with indoor football, we have also been preparing for Thanksgiving next week with a few things. 

We actually made the Indian headbands on Monday, getting Alyssa use to using crayons and singing along to 10 Little Indians, whilst Arthur tried to do and Indian cry.  They had great fun and ejoyed wearing them, I just have to keep them out of harms way so they don't get damaged before next week!

Today we made the toilet roll turkeys using a toilet roll and half a paper plate, it's a nice simple and can be adapted with glueing feathers on or using whatever, we again used some crayons so Alyssa could get involved.  Once we made the turkeys we found a variety of Turkey songs on YouTube to sing along too, and did the Turkey trot around the front room. 

I'm looking forward to the fun I have planned for Thanksgiving using these two makes, and many more to come!

Practicing with crayons

Arthur colouring his headband

OOOOOOOOOH!

Yeay!

Two Little Indians!

More crayon fun

Multicoloured feathers

Two little Turkey's

Doing the Turkey trot!