Advent Calendar

As the holiday season is approaching I thought it would be a great time to show you an Advent Calendar that I made for my son this past weekend.

I sketched out a picture of Santa and on his beard I drew 24 circles and numbered them. Each day, we will glue on either a white pom pom or a white cotton ball. I have not decided which one yet.

This Santa is cute but he did not turn out exactly they way I had envisioned so I will give you some pointers on how I envisioned him working out. I wanted to make him magnetic to hang on the inside of our front door and each day we would use a magnet pom pom to fill in his beard. I had already even made the magnet pom poms by gluing magnets on to small white pom poms. However, I thought he would be sturdier if I drew him on craft foam so I traced my original sketch onto the white craft foam and then cut out red foam for his hat and glued that onto the white foam. I then glued on googly eyes and a large white pom pom for the hat.

Once that was dry, I put magnets on the bag and stuck him to the door. I have to admit, I was pretty proud of myself, until I tried to put a magnet pom pom on his beard and realized the craft foam was too thick for the magnets to be able to stick to the metal door. I was very disappointed but you can rectify this when you make one. Instead of using craft foam like I did, sketch the Santa onto card stock and then you can laminate him for durability and the magnets should still stick to a metal surface.

Feel free to print out a copy of the Santa for your use.


Happy Holidays! If you decide to make a Santa Advent Calendar, please send us a picture or a link to him!

Apple Pie Play Dough

Recently my son's class at daycare has been studying an Apple Theme. Since they started that he is obsessed with Apple Pie. I do not mean he wants to eat apple pie, he just likes to say apple pie. When he is leaving the room he even looks at me and says "Bye-bye, Apple Pie." It is adorable.

I tried to serve him some apple pie for dessert but he wanted nothing to do with it. I then decided that we would make a "pretend apple pie" with apple pie scented play dough.

 Dough recipe:
1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
1 tbsp oil
1 tbsp cream of tarter
1 cup water
apple pie seasoning (I just shook it in until I liked the smell)
Red food coloring

Stir the ingredients well and then cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the dough forms a ball. Put the dough on the counter and fill your pan with water to soak. Now go back to your dough and you will knead it out until it is smooth and feels "right". Store it in a plastic bag that is zipped closed.

When I pulled out the dough, I also pulled out some rolling pins and some disposable "pot pie" pans. We rolled out a section of the dough and used it as the bottom crust. After we put that in the pan, we tore off small pieces of the dough and rolled them in our hands and dropped them into the crust. Once the pan was full, we rolled out another section to use as the top crust. I cut out a design on this to "vent" the pie.

My son loved this experience and we have played with the apple pie dough several more times since this first experience. I think I will be making pumpkin pie dough soon!

Happy Thanksgiving

We are enjoying the day with our families and hope that you are doing the same! If you are looking to fit in some holiday shopping, please check our Kids Matter website for some great products. As always, the proceeds go towards raising awareness of issues affecting kids and families everywhere.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Wordless Wednesday - Kids Matter goes Global!

After the devastation in Haiti, Kids Matter went to work and sold "Have a Heart, Lend a Hand" shirts. The proceeds from each shirt was sent to Haiti along with a youth size shirt. These are some of the many children we were able to assist with our campaign.

Monday Meanderings - Thanksgiving Snacks

Since this is Thanksgiving week, I thought it would be nice to post some snacks that the kids can make to "help" you out.

First we have these very cute Turkey Track Crackers from Family Fun Magazine. Chow mein noodles never looked so creative.

From Kids Cooking Activities we have several ideas, including the cute Fruit Loop Apple Turkeys picture above.

Last but not least, we have Nick Jr with the very cute pilgrim hats made with ice cream cones. They are adorable!

Weaving Place Mats

Here is an easy activity for the kids to do for Thanksgiving. The only supplies needed are 2 sheets of paper, a pair of scissors and glue. You can laminate it or use clear contact paper to make the place mat sturdier.

We took one sheet of paper and folded it in half. We then made cuts in the paper from the folded edge to 1 inch from the other end. We made those cuts all along the length of the paper fold.

Next we cut the other page of paper into strips and weaved the pieces through the slits on the other page. The only place we glued the strips were on each end.