Books and activities

The activities continue:

1.  We read Room for a Little One about a kind Ox that welcomes a dog into the stable.  The dog then welcomes a cat, who welcomes a mouse, etc.  Finally, the animals all welcome baby Jesus.  The pictures in this book are so beautiful and I think this is one of my favorite Christmas books.  Because it is a story about the manger we decided to make our own little Nativity Scene.  I found this adorable Nativity Scene on Pinterest and printed one off for each boy.  They each colored their own and then cut them out.  This was an activity that each boy enjoyed.  It was a tough day for me this day so I think this was a good activity to end the day with--a reminder to slow down and just do my best and remember why we celebrate the season. 

I'm not sure if you can tell from the picture but poor Isaac is sick in this picture.  He has had a fever off and on for a good portion of the week.

2.  The story we read on Tuesday was A Wish to be a Christmas Tree.  I also really like this Christmas book.  It's just a sweet story about an old tree who wants to be a Christmas tree but watches all the other trees get chosen.  His friends (all the woodland animals) realize that he feels unneeded and unappreciated so they decide to show him how much they appreciate him.  They all collect things from the forest and decorate the tree as he sleeps.  When he wakes the next morning he is surprised to find himself all decorated and all his friends gathered around.  His friends proceed to tell him how much the appreciate him and apologize for not telling him sooner.  They explain that while he might not be chosen to be a Christmas tree his is invaluable to them.  For the activity that night we had the boys write letters of appreciation to people they love.  They each chose someone different and wrote little notes telling that person why they appreciated them.  

3.  Wednesday we read Once there was a Christmas Tree.  It's about one tree that gets cut down and shared with four different families.  The bear family cuts the tree and then realizes it's too tall for their house so they cut a portion of the tree and give it to the Fox family who doesn't have a tree.  The Fox family remembers that Old Rabbit doesn't have anyone to spend Christmas with so they cut part of the tree and take it to him.  Old Rabbit then discovers a family of mice in his house who are poor and don't have a tree or food so he shares his dinner and then when they go to sleep cuts part of his tree and gives it to the family of mice.  I will write about his activity in a separate post.  

That night we also read another book called The Christmas Penguin.  It's a book about a Penguin that writes a letter to Santa saying that he wishes to fly.  Santa come to his house and asks Penguin to come help him deliver presents.  Suddenly the bag of presents falls out of the sleigh into the water.  Penguin dives into the water and retrieves the bag of gifts.  He realizes that while he might not have the gift of flying, he does have the gift of flying through the water.  For this activity we each got a piece of paper with our names on it and everyone started with someone else's paper.  We all wrote something about that person that we thought was a talent they had and then we passed the paper around and did the same thing for each person in the family until we all had our papers back with all the talents that each person thought we had.  The boys LOVED this activity.  They loved to think of talents each person had and drew pictures next to what they wrote and they loved reading about what everyone thought their talents were.  I was surprised at how much they liked this activity.  We also read the verses about spiritual gifts in Moroni 10, talking about how we all have gifts or talents that have been given to us.  

4.  For the activity on Thursday we read Ten Timid Ghosts on a Christmas Night.  It is a rhyming book about ten timid ghosts that watch for Santa to arrive.  This is just a simple Christmas story--not my favorite but fun.  The boys enjoy counting all the ghosts on each page (some are hiding so they have to try and find them in the pictures).  I bought some sugar cookie dough (I'm all about quick and easy right now) and we used a ghost cookie cutter to cut out ghost cookies, followed by decorating them with Christmas sprinkles.

  

5.  Tonight we read Papa Panov's Special Day.  This is one of my all time favorite Christmas stories.  I will post about his one separately too.