Skip to main content

Playing Santa

In our family Santa isn't really a part of the Christmas season. We do not have any strong feelings against Santa Claus, we just decided that he wasn't going be something we included in our family traditions. There are so many things husbandie and I love to do during Christmas time, so our energies simply go elsewhere - there just isn't time left for Mr. Claus. This year, however, Big Buddy started to express interest in Santa so I decided to teach him about St. Nicholas.  The book The Legend of St. Nicholas has been a great resource. Not only did it explain who St. Nicholas was, but a boy in the book (also named Nick) learns from St. Nicholas's example and takes great joy in giving gifts to others.  


Every year husbandie and I buy gifts for a few less fortunate children and this year I decided to include the boys. I explained to them that they were getting to be "Santa" for some other children. In order to be Santa though, Big Buddy insisted that he needed a hat. I didn't want to spend money on one so we made do with what we had on hand.

cotton balls, left over party hat, glue
gluing on the cotton balls
lucky for me mini man didn't care that his hat
was green instead of red
finished hats

The boys went shopping with me to pick out the gifts. I was pleasantly surprised by the experience - neither of them asked for toys for themselves or to play with gifts we bought. They genuinely seemed excited about giving to other children. 

wrapping the gifts

The boys enjoyed playing Santa so much that I'm sure we'll do it again next year.  We might even buy some real hats :). 




Comments

  1. How cute! And I am impressed that your kids are wearing the hats! Not sure mine would.

    Thank you for sharing on Kids Get Crafty!

    Maggy

    ReplyDelete
  2. What a fantastic tradition to buy for less fortunate children every year!

    Those hats are so cute. I almost think they are cuter than the real thing. :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. What a wonderful way to teach them to give to others. I really like their Santa hats!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment - you make me smile :)

Popular posts from this blog

A Little Red Cardboard Barn

We've finished our farm unit and are moving on to a new theme tomorrow - but before we do I wanted share the barn we made. The wooden farm animals came with a beautiful handmade ark that we gave Big Buddy for Christmas a couple years ago.  I would someday love to have a wood barn but it's currently not in the budget. So in the mean time we decided to improvise and make our own.  I stumbled upon this perfectly sized milk box (4 gallons per box) while subbing and thought it would be sturdy enough to handle play. Hubandie and the boys used an x-acto knife and wood glue to build a barn shape. to get the doors to fold out hubandie used an x-acto knife and scored the inside of the cardboard We then painted with a basic primer and outlined a window and a door with painters tape. cardboard is very porous so priming is a must if you want decent coverage Big Buddy however insisted that we add more windows so it looked like the barn in our book The Big

Preschool Syllabus: Dr. Seuss

Normally I'd do a Dr. Seuss unit in March around his birthday. We had to do one now though because on Saturday Big Buddy and I going on a date to a  Dr. Seuss exhibit . The exhibit is only at the museum until January and I'm afraid if we don't go now we might not get the chance. We are of course reading lots of Dr. Seuss's books. A great advatage to studying Dr. Seuss in November rather than March is that all his books were available at the library. I also found a great children's biography which is perfect for preschoolers. Pebble First Biographies: Dr. Seuss  We've read it a couple times and Big Buddy loves reciting all the facts he's learned WRITING CENTER ADDITIONS big buddy's name in sand paper letters, coloring pages  & mazes from seussville.com skills practiced: fine motor, letter recognition, creativity,  reading comprehension LEARNING "TRAYS" -   I rotate these, setting out about four a day from which the boy&#

Jack-O-Lanterns on the Fridge

Last fall I saw the idea for refrigerator pumpkins with face pieces in FamilyFun Magazine  and have been anxious to recreate them ever since. It was pretty quick and easy and since the only thing we didn't have on hand was magnetic sheets ($1.50 with coupon at Joann's) it was also very cheap. my supplies: magnetic sheets, orange & black construction paper, white pen, tacky glue *i know they have self adhesive sheets but my Joann's didn't carry them   glued (very messily) and ready to cut Both the boys were quite enthused when they discovered them after rest time :) Hopefully it will keep them entertained until we carve real pumpkins.