Category: Holidays

Valentine’s Day Preschool

My 4 year old wanted to have some fun this Valentine’s Day. I printed out Valentine’s Day Preschool / Toddler Math & Literacy Activity Pack Worksheets from Teacher’s Pay Teachers, which had lots of fun activities.

Strawberry Shapes Cut & Glue

Storm cut out the strawberry shapes. She told me the name of each shape as she glued it to the Strawberry Patch. The shapes included circle, square, triangle, rectangle, oval, diamond, star, heart, crescent.

Flower Colors Cut & Glue

She cut out the flower colors. She told me the name of each color as she glued it to the Flower Garden. The colors included red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, brown, black, white, gray.

The Valentine’s Day Preschool Pack also included many other cut and glue pages that she enjoyed.

Painting Ceramics

She got a ceramic butterfly bank to paint with acrylic paints.

Flower Play Dough

We made this homemade flower play dough using the recipe from the Valentine’s Day Preschool Pack. We added lavender essential oils and glitter to make it more fun. Then Storm rolled out the dough and used my Wilton heart cutters to place hearts on the Flower Play Dough Mat.

Butterfly Life Cycle

We printed the butterfly life cycle and the 2 Corinthians 5:17 Valentine’s Day Preschool Pack. Then we got out our Butterfly Life Cycle Stages figurines for her to play with as well.

Coloring Pages

Here are a few of the coloring pages from the Valentine’s Day Preschool Pack. These covered shapes, colors, and numbers. There are also some Bible Verse pages too.

Valentine Volcano

This was one of her favorite activities today. We made the volcano in a clear glass heart dish and added glitter. After we made the volcano she played with it for a long time. We got this Valentine Volcano from the Valentine’s Day Preschool Pack too.

Trace & Color Pages

Here are a few of the tracing pages from the Valentine’s Day Preschool Pack. These pages covered the shapes and the numbers.

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Valentine’s Day Baking

I love making food for my family, so we did some homemade baking for Valentine’s Day this year. The girls loved helping and the boys loved eating!

Cream Puffs

Puff Pastries Ingredients:

  • 1 1/4 cup frozen butter
  • 1/4 cup cold water
  • 1/4 teas salt
  • 2 cups all purpose flour

Puff Pastries Directions:

  1. I used my food processor with the metal blade and the shredding disk.
  2. Place the flour and salt into the food processor.
  3. Slowly add the frozen butter through the shredder as the food processor is pulsing.
  4. Add the cold water and pulse until a ball of dough forms.
  5. Place dough on a clean and floured surface. Roll out dough until it is about 12×18 inches.
  6. Add more flour to the dough and fold it into thirds. Add more flour and fold that in half. Place in a zip lock bag and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

Cream Puff Directions:

  1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and line to baking sheets with wax paper. Spray lightly with baking spray.
  2. Wrap forks with aluminum foil to resemble a cone and spray them too.
  3. Unfold the puff pastry and cut it with a pizza cutter into long 1 inch strips.
  4. Start at the small end of the fork mold and wrap the strip of puff pastry around it overlapping each layer by 1/4 inch. Place on the baking sheet.
  5. Prepare an egg wash with egg and water. Brush each horn with the egg wash.
  6. Bake for 15-17 minutes turning half way though.
  7. Allow them to cool for a few minutes and then remove the aluminum foil fork to finish cooling.
  8. Fill with the following Whipped Cream Recipe and dust with powered sugar.

Whipped Cream Ingredients:

  • 2 cups heavy whipping cream chilled
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • ¼ cup confectioners’ sugar

Whipped Cream Instructions:

  1. Add the heavy whipping cream, sugar, and vanilla to the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the whisk attachment.
  2. With the mixer on medium speed, whip the cream until it begins to thicken.
  3. Continue whipping for several minutes until the cream is fluffy (medium peaks) but not too firm.
  4. Use immediately or cover tightly and chill for up to 36 hours.

Heart Pizzas

Ingredients:

  • 2 teas sugar
  • 1 teas dry active yeast
  • 2/3 cup warm water (105 degrees)
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 teas salt
  • 2 TBS olive oil
  • Pizza Sauce
  • Pepperoni
  • Mozzarella Cheese

Directions:

  1. Mix sugar and warm water. Then sprinkle with yeast and let sit for 5 minutes.
  2. Add in the flour, salt, and olive oil and mix with dough hook in electric mixer.
  3. Once it is well mixed knead for 5 minutes.
  4. Divide dough into 2 pieces and place into an oiled pan. Cover and let it rise for and hour.
  5. Preheat oven to 475 degrees and roll out dough. I cut mine into heart shapes.
  6. Spread the pizza sauce and cheese then bake for 12-15 minutes.

Strawberry Shortcake

Shortcake Ingredients:

  • 1 cup flour
  • 2/3 cup sugar
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
  • 1/3 cup butter softened
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 1 egg

Strawberry Ingredients:

  • 2 cups strawberries hulled and sliced
  • 2 tablespoons granulated sugar

Directions:

  1. Start by preparing the strawberries. Add sliced strawberries to a bowl and sprinkle them with sugar. Stir to combine. Let them hang out on your counter for about 2 hours and they will create a delicious juice. I recommend stirring them every half hour or so.
  2. Next, preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.
  3. Spray the heart shaped cupcake mold generously with baking spray. Then, add some all-purpose flour to the molds, shake it around, and discard the excess.
  4. The next step is to whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. Then add the vanilla, softened butter, milk, and egg. With an electric mixer, beat on medium speed for about two minutes.
  5. Divide the batter evenly among the prepared heart shaped cupcake mold . Each mold should be about three-quarters full. In case there are any drips, set the pan on a baking sheet while spooning the batter into the molds. Then place the shortcake pan in the preheated oven.
  6. Bake the little cakes for 18-20 minutes. Allow the cakes to cool completely in the pan before attempting to remove them. Gently loosen each cake with your fingers: then invert the pan to release the cakes.
  7. While the shortcakes cool, prepare the whipped cream (I used the left over whipped cream from the cream puffs).
  8. Spoon a generous amount of the strawberries and juice on each shortcake. Top with a dollop of Homemade Whipped Cream. Garnish with a sliced strawberry and sprig of fresh mint, if desired.

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Christmas Tree Teepee

This year I really wanted to make a Teepee Tree for my girls to play in. The idea is that the kids can play inside of the Christmas tree for a month and then Santa puts the gifts inside of the Teepee on Christmas morning.

I really had no idea how to build it, and I couldn’t find any satisfactory directions. So I decided to go at it one step at a time (which took much longer than I wanted and was very much frustrating at times).

I started by purchasing a 5 foot Teepee. I put together the Teepee and saw that it was saggy since I wasn’t able to attach the corner stakes that go into the ground that hold it firm.

I decided to get some 1/2 inch PVC pipe to form the bottom boarder of the inside of the teepee. Since the teepee is 5ft x 5ft I made the PVC square, but the corner pieces that hold it together add about and inch on each side; so I had to cut an inch off of my 5 foot pieces.

Next I folded the flaps back, but I needed something sturdy to attach my garland to. So I got 2 six foot pieces of PCV pipe and a three foot piece to form a triangle door for my Teepee. I attached the six foot pieces to the three foot piece with 90 degree corner pieces. (The PVC pipe is much cheaper at Lowes or Home Depot.)

I used zip ties to attach the triangle PVC to my 5 foot square PCV. I also zip tied the top of my PVC triangle to the top of my teepee poles.

I used 250 feet of green Christmas garland for my teepee. I place the first row of my garland all the way around the teepee, securing it in the 4 corners with a safety pin where the tent stake goes through.

After the first wrap or two around the entire teepee, I needed to wrap the garland around the PVC triangle opening to my teepee every time I came around to the front to create the opening.

I noticed that the garland was sagging, so I used binder clips on the corner teepee poles to hold the garland tight.

I continued wrapping the garland back and forth around the teepee using the clips on the corners until I got to the top of where I wanted the door opening to be.

The PVC triangle doorway was showing quite a bit of white pipe through, so I wrapped some smaller pieces of garland around it to cover the pipes.

I then started wrapping the garland all the way around the teepee top to close up the top of the door.

I had extra garland and the top of my tree looked a little scrawny, so I used the rest of my garland and wrapped the top part of my tree t more times. Then I wrapped the top of the teepee poles with the last bit of garland.

For the lights, I just zig zagged them back and forth on the side of the tree that showed. I used the binder clips that were already on the tree to keep the lights in place. When the lights got to the top of the tree, then I could wrap the lights all the way around the tree.

We decorated the tree and put a tree skirt in the bottom of the tree.

The girls liked to take their stuffed animals into their Christmas tent.

Merry Christmas!

Here are some of my other Christmas DIY posts:

DIY Christmas Fruit Basket & Crafts

We made a variety of different DIY gifts this year for Christmas. We made Christmas carol canvases and fruit trees. We also made little Christmas bulb trees to put in the fruit basket. These were so fun to make with the little girls.

DIY Christmas Bulb Tree

We made these little Christmas trees out of 1.5 inch Christmas blubs. I made about 30 of these because I wanted to keep a few for myself. We put the trees in the teacher fruit baskets with nuts, pine twigs, and chocolates.

I got a 1×2 board and cut it at 5 inches (you may need to cut yours longer if you have larger bulbs). Then I found some old letter blocks in the basement to use at the tree stand. I got black spray paint and sprayed all of the wooden pieces.

Once the spray paint dried for 24 hours, I used wood glue to glue the block to one side of the board. Then I used my hot glue gun to glue 4 bulbs along the board, be sure to place the ornament hook in the back of the tree. Then I glued 3 bulbs on top of the 4, and 2 on top of the 3, and then 1 on the very top of the tree.

I had some gold sparkle cardstock and I used my start punch to make a star to go on top of the tree.

I just loved the way these turned out and they were small enough to fit in my fruit baskets perfectly.

Teacher Fruit Baskets

We made these Christmas fruit baskets for teachers, coaches, car pool drivers, neighbors, pastors, and coworkers.

I found these baskets at the consignment store. I wanted to use bigger basket for my coworkers, and I love the way that they turned out.

I needed about 10 smaller baskets for my sons teachers and coaches. I always save the Velveeta Cheese boxes for the past 10 years or so. I had about 30 of them, so I glued them together in threes and then wrapped them with Christmas paper. Then I stuffed the bottoms with brown packing paper to help hold the fruit up.

Next I added tissue paper and I went out to our yard to get some sprigs of evergreen tree. I placed my Christmas Bulb Tree in the middle and added the fruit around it. I wanted to stick with red and green fruit, so I chose red and green apples, pears, kiwi, and limes.

Next we added small pine cones, mixed nuts, cinnamon sticks, mini candy canes, and Ferrero Rocher.

Last, I placed our family Christmas card in the box and wrapped it with cellophane wrap. I used tiny clear elastics to hold the cellophane closed and added a Christmas ribbon around it.

I took about 7 baskets to church pastors and friends as well. For their baskets I found these super cute boxes at the Dollar Tree and placed the tissue paper inside. Then I added the pine twigs, my Christmas Bulb Tree, fruit, and nuts.

Finally, I placed our family Christmas card in the box and wrapped it with cellophane wrap. I used tiny clear elastics to hold the cellophane closed and added a Christmas ribbon around it.

I used a large bowl from the Dollar Tree to make these last two baskets for our neighbors. I placed a Christmas candle in the middle and used up the rest of my supplies for these.

Here is our family Christmas picture that I put in the cards with the fruit baskets.

Kids Christmas Carol Canvas

The girls made Christmas canvases for their Grandparents gifts. We used 11×14 inch canvases and put Christmas Carols on them. The girls used different shades of green acrylic paint (Hunter Green and Spring Green) to paint the entire canvas.

After the paint dried, I printed out some old Christmas Carols and used Mod Podge to sponge brush it onto the canvas. I put the Mod Podge under the carol and on top of it.

After that dried, the girls used gold sparkle paint to paint the boarder of the carol paper.

Last we used red Dot Daubers to make the groups of 3 dots around the painting.

Then I hot glued a fabric holly leaf to the top of the canvas.

I really love how they turned out, and the girls grandparents loved them as well.

Here are some of the other DIY Christmas posts…

Thanksgiving Gingerbread Nativity -24

Every year we make gingerbread houses on Thanksgiving. We made a Nativity scene with graham crackers and gum drop people. We used coconut for the hay and animal crackers with candy canes as well. We tried something new this year, using peanut butter instead of icing; but it wasn’t sturdy enough so the gumdrops kept falling over. Next time we will have to add some powdered sugar to the peanut butter to thicken it up.

We also got this Gingerbread Train to try.

Homemade Apple Cinnamon Play Dough

We made some homemade Apple Cinnamon Play Dough, it is included in my Teachers Pay Teachers Fall Fun Autumn Preschool Pack. I also laminated the Apple Tree Orchard Play Dough Mat that is included in the pack.

Ingredients:

Directions:

  • In a small saucepan, mix together 1 cup of water, 1 TBSP vegetable oil and a few drops of red food coloring.
  • In another small bowl mix together 1 cup flour, 1/3 cup salt, 2 teaspoons of cream of tartar and 2 teaspoons Apple Pie Spice.
  • Turn the stove on medium heat and slowly mix your flour mixture into your water mixture.
  • Continuing mixing until the color is fully blended and the playdough begins to pull away from the saucepan. The batter will be lumpy but as you stir the playdough begins to form and sticks to itself.
  • Place the playdough on a piece of parchment paper and allow it to cool a bit.
  • Once it’s cool to the touch knead for a few minutes until soft.

Here are some of our other Thanksgiving Gingerbread posts:

Gingerbread House -23
Thanksgiving Baking -20
Kids Thanksgiving Treats -19

And here are some of our other Family Holidays:

Talk Like a Pirate Day
Easter Minute-to-win-it
Christmas Fireplace & Crafts

Talk Like a Pirate Day Lunch

September 19th is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. We made a fun pirate themed lunch for the kids at school. The lunch staff also wore pirate hats and we bought eye patches for the kids.

Sea Shaped Fish Nuggets

Our food supplier doesn’t have fish sticks, but they do have fish nuggets in the shape of sea creatures.

Treasure Map Cheese Sticks

We just used Sharpies to draw a red X on the cheese sticks with black dotted lines for the trail.

Pirates Booty Puffs

We bought small bags of Pirates Booty Aged White Cheddar corn puffs. The kids laughed when we announced “Pirates Booty”!

Pirate Ship Jello Cups

We placed blue Jello in the bottom of clear plastic cups and added an orange wedge on the top. Then we added a Pirate Flag to the orange wedge to look like a Pirate ship.

Carrot Stick Planks

We cup up carrot sticks and called them “Carrot Planks”.

You might enjoy some of my other party posts:

Classroom Easter Minute-to-Win-it

Titus’s Middle School class Easter party had fun with a competition called Tournament of the Peeps. We had 4 teams, each a different color of Peep, and they played Minute-to-Win-it type games.

Angry Peeps

Stand 4 bunny Peeps of each color at one side of the table. 1 participant from each team will stand at the other side of the room. Use a rubber band to knock over the Peeps of the other team colors in one minute. Once all of your Peeps are knocked over you are out while the other teams keep playing.

Peeps in a Nest

One of your teammates will hold an Easter basket on his head, at one side of the room. Another teammate will get 10 Peeps and stand 6 feet away from the buckets. The teammate with the Peeps will see how many of the 10 he can toss into their teams bucket. You only have 1 minute.

Peep Tower

Teams will use 6 Chick Peeps to build the tallest Peep Tower in 1 minute. Peeps can be torn, stacked, or whatever other method the team comes up with to make the tallest tower (no other supplies allowed).

Peep in Your Face

Place 8 Peeps on a place at the table. 1 player from each team will stand at the table with hands behind their back. They player has 1 minutes to eat as many Peeps as he can.

Peep Catapult

Each team will build a catapult in 5 minutes. Teams will have access to craft sticks, rubber bands, and plastic spoons. First stack 5-7 craft sticks and use the rubber bands to fasten them on each end. Then make a stack of 2 craft sticks and fasten them together on 1 end only. Pull the 2 sticks apart and wedge the stack of sticks between them. Use 2 rubber bands to secure the spoon to the upper craft stick. Place a Peep on the spoon and hold the base of the catapult securely against the floor with one hand. Use the other hand to push down the spoon. Release the spoon and the Peep should fly.

Place an Easter basket 3 feet away from the catapult See how many Peeps you can catapult into your basket in 1 minute.

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8th Grade Class Auction Project

Each year our school does an auction fund raiser. Each class makes a collaborative art project and an auction basket. My 8th grader’s class worked together to create a wooden Christmas ornaments for the school fundraising auction this year.

Collaborative Christmas Ornaments

I had each child a wooden circle with a whole near the top. Then they decorated their hand with paint markers in a Christmas design. After they decorated them, we put twine through the whole and added a wooden bead or bow.

Dinner Menu Gift Cards/ Auction Basket

We found a chalk board that said “Weekly Menu” on it. Then strung twine back and froth across the front to hang gift cards from. We used tiny wooden clothes pins to hang the cards.

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DIY Cinnamon Christmas Candles

I made these Cinnamon Stick Candles for Christmas gifts. Each year we give small gifts to all of teachers, coaches, neighbors, coworkers, and our church pastors along with our family Christmas card and photo.

Supplies:

I used the hot glue to attach the cinnamon sticks to the outside of the candles. Some taller candles needed two rows of cinnamon sticks, one above the ribbon and one below. Then I glued the twine and ribbon around the candle and added the holly and jingle bells.

Each year we take a Christmas photo to put in our cards. This year I had the kids dress in their Christmas pajamas!

Merry Christmas!

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Gingerbread House Tradition -23

Our family Thanksgiving tradition is making Gingerbread Houses. This year we used a Wilton House Kit with the icing and candies.

We use the icing like the glue to hold the gingerbread house together. Then once it was pretty sturdy, we used the glue to attach the candy decorations.

This is a tradition that my little sister and I started when we were teenagers. I have continued it with my kids (and sometimes their cousins) for over 20 years now.

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