DIY Nativity Finger Puppets

When I spotted some adorable felt nativity stickers a while back at Hobby Lobby, I knew exactly what I was going to do with them. They needed to be turned into nativity finger puppets. Since they already had a very strong adhesive on the back of them, I just hot glued two pieces of felt together (leaving room for a finger to fit inside), stuck on the sticker, and then cut around them.

They seriously only took about 10 minutes to make and they seem to be pretty durable.
They are a nice toddler-friendly way to retell the birth of our Savior.

Weekly Highlights

This little guy rolled over for the first time this week.

He hates being on his belly so his solution is to just roll
over as soon as we put him on his belly.

Silas has also taken quite the interest in books.

He absolutely loves being read to and a book can calm him down
almost immediately if he gets upset.

We went to eat at Cracker Barrel one night this week. While we were there I spotted this little wooden train set marked down to $14.99.

Seth is really into trains right now so we knew he would love it.
It's been pretty much all he has played with for the last few days.

Tillery Tot School- Christmas Edition

This week we did lots of Christmas crafty things during our learning time. Here's a look at some of our fun.

We decorated a pine cone using pom poms so that it looked like a little Christmas tree.

We made a Christmas tree using different lengths of paper.
We talked about longest to shortest and glued the strips on in that order.

We played with nativity stamps (found at Hobby Lobby for 50% off).

We made a manger craft.

We used two popscicle sticks for the manger and some bits of raffia as the straw.
Then we just made baby Jesus out of two circles.

I printed out this gift printable and we colored and cut it out.

We played with foam nativity stickers.

We decorated a tree using pom poms and we counted
each row of circles as we were gluing them onto the tree.

We made a Christmas tree out of popscicle sticks.

We sorted mini ornaments. We focused only on colors this particular time,
but we might try it again and talk about color and texture next time.

We played with a mini nativity set (also found at Hobby Lobby for 50% off).

We have more fun activities planned for this week, too!

Gingerbread Nativity

Last night we raided the cabinets, turned on the Christmas music, and sat down to make a gingerbread nativity. I saw the idea floating around on Pinterest (of course) a while back and thought it was such a cute alternative to making a traditional gingerbread house.

Seth loved munching on all the candy, marshmallows, and graham crackers.

Silas either cried or stayed completely freaked out
by flying sprinkles that Seth kept throwing everywhere.

But in the end, after some dedicated work...

and the help of some super cute food...

we had a decent looking nativity.

It resembled a nativity enough that Seth was able to name every part
which melted our hearts.

Silas Eating Cereal

Silas was 4 months old on December 3rd. At his well baby check-up, that ended up becoming a sick baby appointment, he weighed over 13 lbs. and was over 24 inches long. Our typically smiley baby has had the croup for the last week and has been taking steroids to treat it. Now that his croupy cough is going away, we thought we could try some rice cereal since the boy loves to eat. Our feeding went a little something like this...

scream, scream, scream

spit, spit, spit.

I think it might take a few more tries before Silas becomes a fan of this new method of eating.

On the Mend

Sickness invaded our home last week just a few hours after I posted about all of our upcoming Advent activities. We didn't get to go to BG Lights Up! We opted to keep our sick boys home, pop some popcorn, and watch a movie. If you haven't seen The First Noel, it is adorable. (I found our copy on the $5 Doorbuster table at the Family Christian Store.) It's short and sweet and just what our two year old needed when he wasn't feeling too well. Plus it ended up being a great kick-off to Advent.
We haven't been able to do all of the crafts that I had planned, but we have the rest of the month to enjoy them.

We ended up making our Christmas cards a few days later than I wanted,
but at least they will be delivered to their recipients way earlier than last year.

Seth thought they were super fun to make!

We have also played with nativity magnets.

(This set was bought at Hobby Lobby and was 50% off.)

I found a nativity puzzle book at one of the local consignment stores,
so we read it and worked a couple of the puzzles.
(Next year, I think the puzzles will be easier to do, but I'm still glad we tried them.)

I think Seth enjoyed decorating his own felt tree most of all. He was so proud of it. He couldn't wait to show Bryan when he came home from work. It's on the back of one of his bedroom doors and he takes the "ornaments" off and puts them back on several times throughout the day.

Now that we are on the mend,
we can't wait to do more activities!

Advent 2011

Today is the first day of Advent! Advent is a time of longing and a time of sweet anticipation. It's a time when we can anticipate our Savior's birthday.
I have been working for a few months now (mostly pinning things) on our Advent activities. I have also slightly modified an Advent study I found online for us to use during our family time. (If you would like a copy, I would be more than happy to email it to you. Just leave a comment with your email address.)We will be using this felt Advent calendar in addition to our touchable nativity this year. As we are doing our family study each night we will add one character to the nativity and on some nights there will be another touchable object (for example: a bell, coin, snowflake). We might also incorporate a few ideas from the new ebook Truth in the Tinsel. It came out after I had already planned all of our activities, but hopefully we can use it for future years, too.Throughout the month we will be using our family message board as an activity board. Each of the following activities are on individual tags and as we complete them we will turn the tag over so that they just look like hanging ornaments by the end of the 25 days. (Even though I know which activity corresponds to our advent study each day, the tags are not numbered so that they can be re-usable and added to each year.) Since most of the activities were found on Pinterest, I added links in case you wanted to do some of the activities too. I'm sure we will be adding other things throughout the month, but here is our guide so far:
1- BG Lights Up!
2- Make Handmade Christmas Cards
3- Footprint/handprint angels
4- Play with Nativity Magnets
5- Decorate large felt Christmas tree
6- Use Longest to Shortest Paper Strips to make Christmas Tree
7- Nativity Puzzle Book
8- Gingerbread Nativity
9- Live Nativity/Candy Cane craft
10- Pine Cone Christmas Trees decorated with pom poms
11- Baby Jesus Craft (using two popsicle sticks)
12- Play with Star Stickers
13- Handprint Nativity Animals
14- Wise Men Handprint Craft
15- Practice Wrapping Presents/Read The King's List & Pick out Christmas Donations
16- Play with Nativity Finger Puppets
17- Play with a string of lights
18- Light of the World (lightbulb thumbprint craft)
19- Nativity Stamps
20- Sugar Cone Christmas Trees/Jingle Bell bracelets/Play with bells
21- Sort Bows by Color and Size
22- Nativity Stickers
23- Make Baby Jesus- using envelope
24- Baby Jesus Paper Bag craft
25- Bake Happy Birthday Jesus Cake and decorate the house with streamers

Just as a couple, Bryan and I are going to be reading through the Behold the Lamb of God Advent study. It just came out this year and I am really looking forward to it each evening.

So tonight we'll snuggle up as a family of four and we will begin this month-long journey of retelling the greatest story ever told. We will savor the story and we will long for our Savior.