Christmas Maxtivities

 

Gingerbread House

We took the easy route and bought a kit at Target.

It was easy and fun!

 

 Speedway in Lights

 

Visits with Santa

Maxton has had quite alot of face time with Santa this year.

He has stayed consistent with his wishes each time.

 

Making Play Clay Ornaments

I should be cleaning my house or doing something more productive but it is Christmas season so we have been crafting all morning.  I love Saturdays!

You will need:

2 Cups of Baking Soda

1 Cups of Corn Starch

1 and 1/4 Cups of Water

food coloring 

decorations of your choosing (we used glitter and craft gems)

I used this recipe:    http://www.armandhammer.com/solutions/solution-20/Play-Clay.aspx

 Mix together baking soda, corn starch and water in a saucepan. Heat on Medium 

  until it looks like mashed potatoes. Stir the whole time, it took about 10 minutes.

Place on a plate and let cool before kneading into a ball of dough.  We divided ours into two balls and added green food coloring to one batch and glitter to the other.

glitter batch

food coloring batch

 Roll out your dough and use cookie cutters to make whatever shapes you want.  Max wanted to make green trees and white snowflakes, so that's what we made.  Poke a small hole in each one so you can hang it later.

We decorated ours with little gems but you could also paint them.

 When you finish decorating let them harden for a few hours or you can heat them in the oven.

I preheated to 300 and then turned the oven off before putting them inside.  I left them in the heat for about 20 minutes.  I will probably brush on some Modge Podge to seal.

ABC & 123 Crayons

 Making Letter and Number Crayons

We first made these letter crayons  last February.  Prior to making these crayons Max was pretty much uninterested in letters.  After we made them I used them to teach Maxton his uppercase letters and numbers.  He loved matching them on  playmats I made for him.  He learned to recognize and name  all of  his letters and the numbers 0-9  in about 2 weeks at age 2! 

Since then we have made many more sets of these for gifts and of course to replace broken ones from our set.  We have extended this activity by  spelling our names and other high frequency words.  This is an activity he chooses to play with over and over. 

 

Peeling the paper off.

A completed set right out of the molds.

 

Letter and number playmats.