Craft A Day 'Til Christmas: Day 13: Gingerbread Play Dough

Today's craft involved some cooking in the kitchen.  We made two batches of wonderful smelling gingerbread play dough.  I found the recipe here.  Eva helped stir all the ingredients together and then I heated them on the stove until a dough consistency formed.  

After it cooled, we divided one batch up and made little gifts for our friends at Spanish class by attaching a cookie cutter and little card.  With the rest, Eva went to town "baking."

We also made a real gingerbread house today.  Eva was a pro at sticking all the bright colored candies everywhere!

Play Dough Planting

It's not quite planting season for us here yet but we still can have flowers!  I came upon this post at Teach Preschool and knew it would be a big hit.  I made a batch of play dough and added a mix of food coloring to turn it brown.  (I also sprinkled in some cocoa to make it smell nice!)  Using some flower pots and bunches of Dollar Store flowers, Eva started planting.

So much fun!  Eva was so into it, she climbed up onto the window seat to get comfy and played for half an hour arranging and rearranging to flowers.

Christmas Play Dough

When I saw this idea on Counting Coconuts I knew we had to do it as well.  I made a batch of green play dough and added some peppermint extract to make it smell more Christmas-y.  Eva and I then molded it into a tree shape.  I had a few sequins and gems in my craft supplies that I gave to Eva to decorate the tree.  She had a blast and got some great fine motor practice in- those little sequins are tough to pick up!

Thanks Mari-Ann for another great idea!
Today Eva got to see Santa.  It took a few walk-bys before she built up the nerve to meet him but she finally did.  She was a little nervous but she was sure to tell him what is on top of her Christmas list- a floor lamp (pretty sure that was Santa's most unique gift request of the day!).

Star of David Ornament

Today we made a Star of David using craft sticks.  (I found a pack of multi-colored craft sticks at the Dollar Store but you could always paint or color plain sticks with markers.)  I set things up for Eva by placing glue dots on the ends of some of the sticks to hold the triangle in place.  Eva did a great job of connecting them to form two triangles.

Then I added a few more glue dots to attach the two triangles together.

Eva then used gold glitter glue to decorate the star.

We set it aside to dry and then added some string to hang it up.

We also gave the orange play dough a sendoff by playing with it one last time using some Hanukkah cookie cutters I found at the Christmas Tree Shop.

Harvest Sensory

Our sensory/exploration area had gotten quite crowded with all the fun Halloween games so it was nice to pack it all away and put out just a few things for harvest.  Every week when we go grocery shopping or stop by the farmers market, Eva requests a gourd.  We have built up quite a collection so I laid them out on a tray.  Later in the week we will sort them by various attributes, but for now they are out to touch and examine.

Our turkey, Mr. Gobbles, is keeping watch over them.  I also packed away the Halloween cookie cutters leaving just pumpkins and turkeys to stamp in the pumpkin pie play dough.  Eva can also use Indian corn to make some neat impressions in the dough.

Finally I replaced the spooky sensory tub with a simple harvest one.  Drawing on Counting Coconuts tub from last year, I filled it with popcorn kernels.  I added some funnels and a few measuring spoons to use as scoops.

It's pretty basic but Eva played with it non-stop for almost an hour when I set it out!  She even figured out how to get the funnels to balance in the kernels.

(Check out her cool stamp- she got that for being a good listener at dance today and couldn't be prouder.)

Halloween Games

I've added some Halloween games to our exploration station.  The first is a simple counting game using little pumpkin buckets and lima bean ghosts (similar to the dalmatians here- thanks for the idea Kathy!).  We are working on counting larger numbers so I labeled the buckets 10-15 and Eva had to count out the correct number of ghosts to go in each.

I thought it was neat that she counted them out on the floor first before placing them in the buckets.  It definitely made it easier to recount if she lost track.

I love how the ghosts look peeking out!

I also whipped up a quick Halloween matching game by placing stickers on squares of cardstock.  We play memory with the pictures facing up but I think Eva may be ready for the trickier version soon.

We have a similar game that came in our October issue of High Five that we can also play.

The sensory tub has gotten a little spookier

and the pompoms have been replaced with spiders in the tonging activity.

There is also a bowl of Halloween finger puppets and rings for Eva to explore (or stick all over Mommy)

and another counting activity using number cards and mini erasers from the dollar bins at Target.

The pumpkin pie play dough is still getting lots of use along with a collection of Halloween cookie cutters.

Finally we made a spider web using yarn and a paper plate.

I made a little die for Eva to roll to see how many spiders to place on the web.

I think we have enough to keep us occupied until the big day arrives!