ornaments Archives - JDaniel4s Mom

A Christmas Spider's Miracle- Read.Explore.Learn.

This week we read a wonderful Christmas story called A Christmas Spider’s Miracle. A very poor mom has very little to give her children for Christmas. She heads into the woods near by to find a tree. Her children deserve to at least have a tree. There will not be ornaments this year, but they can have tree. A very poor mother spider has very little to give her baby spiders. They are so cold out in the snow and there isn’t much too eat.

When the mom brings home a Christmas tree for her children, she doesn’t realize she is giving another family warmth. When the spider realizes what her children have been given, she decides to give the human family ornaments for their tree.

What did we do to explore A Christmas Spider’s Miracle?

JDaniel and I worked on ornaments that he could weave for the tree like the spider did in the book A Christmas Spider’s Miracle. I traced Christmas themed shapes onto cardboard from an empty cereal box. JDaniel and I then punched holes in the shapes.

Yarn was woven in and out of the holes to create a web like effect. I think they turned out well. Yes, I worked on the tree in the bottom left hand corner.

Here are some wonderful posts that were linked up last week:

Brainstorm in Bloom shared the wonderful ways they explored the Magic Tree House book Dinosaurs Before Dark.

Stay at Home Educator shared a wonderful space unit. I love all the activities she shared.

If you like this A Christmas Spider’s Miracle activity, here are some more spider themed activities you will enjoy doing with your kids:

Spider Web Frisbee Toss

Halloween Craft- Button Spider

Making Spider Eggs

Spider Alphabet Swatter

There are even more crafts and learning activities on my Early Learning board on Pinterest.

How have your been exploring books this week?

Taking Time to Play- Christmas Decorations

Sometimes when we craft I just put out the craft supplies and we just explore ways to use them. JDaniel and I sometimes end up with similar end products and other times we come up with totally different ideas. This is exactly what happen when we made these Christmas decorations.

After gathering a small stack of paper plates I cut out several different shapes that we could work with. I cut them out freehand so some of them look a little off. The star really ended up being a little different looking.

Along with the paper plate cutouts, I put out a hole punch, scissors, glue, pipe cleaners, crayons, foam shapes, wiggly eyes, construction paper and some rick rack on the table. Then invited JDaniel to come and create.We had the best time watching each other work. We didn’t copy each other much, but we both were very much aware of what the other was doing. I loved stopping to admire the lasted additions to his creations. He has such great ideas.

Sometimes I leave JDaniel to craft on his own. As he has gotten busy with preschool and with kindergarten looming on the horizon, I have tried to work on craft with him. If we aren’t working on the same project, we are working on parallel projects a lot now.

JDaniel made a wonderful wreath. He loves the hole punch so, it wasn’t a surprise that he punched a number of holes into his wreath. I love the weaving he did through the holes with a sparkly pipe cleaner. The wiggly eyes make me think that this wreath is taking in all that is around it. The spots of color around the wreath are fun too. JDaniel just kept changing crayon colors and coloring one spot beside the other.

I made a torn paper wreath. I asked JDaniel if he wanted to help me tear the paper and he told me he was busy working on his wreath. An artist must have single focus when he is four.

I moved on to decorating one of the angel plates. It was fun to add a wiggly eye or two here and a pipe cleaner there. I didn’t pre-plan this craft as I had the wreath. I just went with the flow. JDaniel inspired me to loosen up a bit.

We both ended up working on trees as our final project. JDaniel noticed that I was just using green crayons to color my tree. At one point I had six or seven different shades of green in front of me. JDaniel decided he was going to use only blue and purple for his. I don’t think he know the song “Blue Christmas” ,but he sure made a wonderful blue Christmas tree.