Right now princess P is all sparkly, because she used some glitter glue as body paint when she got tired of decorating ornaments. Baby Guy was quite indignant, because well, he'd woken up to join the party and we were cleaning up! How dare we. The differences between our kids definitely show up at Christmas tree time.
The last few years, we have made all our ornaments for the Christmas tree. There are lots of reasons for this. It allows the kids to take ownership in the process. It's fun and creative. It's inexpensive, and craft foam is safer for the toddlers too. It also creates a nice path of each child's development, as they proceed from the glob phase to the line phase to the pattern phase.
This year, our oldest two boys are big enough to move on from craft foam and glitter glue. They're working on foam balls with straight pins, bitty beads, and sequins. So this year we'll have some shine to go with our sparkle. They want to do the "stained glass" ornaments too, but I'm still not sure if I'm that brave.
I need to find our adornaments book, so I can copy some off for Baby Guy to color with crayons. It wouldn't be complete without the representation of what Christmas is all about.
Our tree represents our whole family. Everyone gets to take part. Mr. M puts it together and strings on the lights. I purchase the ornament kits and make a few examples of each. The kids put it all together, and then we all hang them on the tree.
We're making the ornaments today, so that we have time for them to dry before we string them and hang them on Friday. Our "drying day" tomorrow will be spent at Mr. M's mom's house, stuffing our faces with turkey, and playing games and watching football. Since she's taken over Thanksgiving the last couple of years our "ornament" tradition has gone much smoother.
So yeah, our holiday kickoff is a little early, but what's wrong with a little sparkle? It's just one more day to enjoy and appreciate what we have.
No comments:
Post a Comment