and here we are with the countdown! if you follow me on facebook, you might have already seen the first days of my advent calendar countdown with activities to do with kids. unfortunately i just can’t manage to post here on the blog every day, but i’ll do the best i can! here’s what we did the first three days:

december 1, 2012

my mother always gives the kids little gifts to open at the beginning of the month, so i put them as the first day of the advent calendar. if you have a gift or something too big to fit inside your calendar, you can always draw a little map and have a fun treasure hunt!

december 2, 2012

i don’t know how many months my daughter, after having seen this project on my pinterest board, had been wanting to make this teddy bear from a sock. i chose the only socks that escaped being transformed to an ankle sock last summer (because its twin had gotten lost), which was also her favorite, and i squashed it into the egg the best i could.

i used a bit of a sleeve cut off from my little guy’s onesie (which used to be my daughter’s) for the mouth area, which i also stuffed slightly. the face is embroidered.

here he is looking at the rain. he’s decided less sad than i am, but perhaps because it was only his first day of heavy rain, and not the 5th in a row, as it was for me. the neck was a little weird, so i took a “collar” with a bell from a lindt bunny that the kids got at easter (and which i ate!), cut it and sewed on a tiny snap to be able to take it off easily.

the heel became it’s little bottom, and i thought i could also make a little tail. i thought that, leaving the heel as is rather than sewing it straight, the bear could have stayed sitting. i was wrong. it doesn’t balance and always falls backwards. to make it stay sitting, you have to put something under it’s bum (for example, the camera lens cap!).

sofia is just in love with this little guy, partly because it’s cute, partly because she helped make it and partly because it’s make from three of her things that we recycled!

december 3, 2012

miss sofia wrote letters. first to santa. when i hinted that he might not bring all four things she asked for, she put numbers in order of importance. then she decided not to ask for one of the things and to split the rest between santa and the befana, the witch that brings kids gifts for epiphany on january 6th. [sigh…] so she cut up the original letter and glued the pieces on two new pieces of paper.

then she made christmas cards for our loved ones who live far away. she was armed with: things to color with, stickers, scissors, glitter glue, normal glue and lots of types of paper, among which a mirror paper that  i got years ago from the recycle store that unfortunately no longer exists at the boston children’s museum. she used this last things to make a game in one card, in which you bend the paper so your reflection gets all distorted, and snow in the other card. she still has to finish the cards and then when she comes home from school today we’ll make something special to put inside them before sending them off. but you’ll have to wait til next time (or the facebook page) to see what! 🙂

how are your advent calendars going?