Printable Nativity, giving ideas, and update on future plans

LOOK! I found this printable cone doll Nativity set! I am so excited!! It reminds me of my childhood. We are coloring our set up and I can't wait to play with it. I am letting Demi color the animals. Travis and I are coloring the people.

The same site has this Christmas village. If you didn't want a Christmas village you could use this as a winter town or tiny doll houses. I can think of many ways to make this a learning set for a preschooler. I am thinking making tiny paper dolls and using them to teach jobs and people in the community. Teaching words like in, out, on, off, cold, warm, and so many other things. Even manners by having people greet each other and welcome them to come visit in each others houses. All of that might have to wait until Jan when I have more free time.


The same site has small printable gift boxes.

Giving ideas for children
I like to keep my personal giving a secret but I have to say I have had a hard time finding giving ideas for little children so I feel that sharing children giving ideas is something I should do in case someone else also has a hard time finding ways teaching little ones to give to others. This year I am printing up a bunch of tiny gift boxes. Travis is putting them together. Demi and Travis together will be filling them with candy (Hershey kisses). Travis picks out what he wants them to say and I print out a page full of the sayings for him to cut out and stick inside the boxes. Sayings we like are Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, or even a Bible verse. I let Travis choose because it is his project. We will take a bag with many boxes in it with us every trip out we make and Travis can hand them out to whomever he wants (strangers in the parking lot and such). Most of the time he picks cashiers. He hands them out and says this is for you have a nice day, Merry Christmas, or something else. I wish I could remember some of the things he said when he was little and gave out beaded ornaments I should have wrote it down because I remember laughing as some of the words he chose to say to people.

One year we went door to door with plates of Christmas cookies. I was new to the area and I didn't know anyone on my road. Travis made a Christmas cards (with hand prints he was a baby) and I stuck the card in the plastic wrap with the plate of cookies. We made up small coco gift packs one year with a mug from the dollar store a plastic spoon covered with chocolate and a pack of coco all tucked in the cup and wrapped with plastic and a red bow at the top. A very young child can stick a pack of coco in a mug and dip the spoons in the chocolate. The melted chocolate stays melted even after it cools some so he couldn't burn himself. He was little and I did have to wrap the spoons he couldn't wrap them in plastic wrap or tie a ribbon on the spoon. One year Travis made candy canes with pony beads (red and white) on a pipe cleaner. We punched holes with a paper punch on the message strips that year and stuck the tag with the saying right on the ornament between the beads. They all are inexpensive child friendly gifts that went over well. I don't know that people LOVED the gifts. LOL! I don't know if they all even celebrate Christmas. I do know that they all seemed to enjoy having a little child hand them a small gift they didn't expect. I am thinking that Travis is now 7 so in the next few years some people might not think it is cute if he handed them a pony bead ornament with a bible verse on it. BUT I think for many more years most people with think him giving a tiny box of chocolates a nice thing even if they don't celebrate Christmas. Demi is very young and cute (like all 2 year olds are) I think she is able to pass out her beaded ornaments she makes to people and nobody will be offended. People find it cute. They could always say to her no thank you if they wanted but I doubt anyone will.

update on some things.
I want to let you all know I didn't forget to post my last 5 mitten ideas. I just took a little break. I will try to post them in the next few days. I will post a new theme in Jan to teach and keep little ones busy. I also wanted to say that I am going to try to post some simple science kits and experiments once a week also starting in Jan. I would start it now but I don't have the time. I have had it on my list of things to do for all of this school year but I haven't got around to doing it yet. I have been doing a lot of thinking back to when Travis was little and I remember having a lot of fun in the little co-op/playgroup I had at my house. I would like to give that same thing to Demi. I am thinking if I post a weekly learning/craft idea for toddlers and a Science kit/experiment for children (my son age but add in how to do it with toddlers) maybe by spring I will be able to have a preschool or toddler group and do a Science co-op once a week a week at my home. I have done preschool and toddler groups several times before at my house and I had lots of luck with that (but that was back when Travis was little). I did kind of try to set up a Science Co-op this year with my son but that did not work out at all. I think if I set it up and present it as a co-op to join I might not have problems with getting it going. I have met several mom's in my county, whenever I go into the library I run into several homeschool moms each time. I love our library. They do special projects for homeschoolers, they have homeschool services (part of that lets you keep books for 1 month at a time), and other wonderful things that are all set up to help homeschool students. I think if I post a note in the library I will get a lot of calls from people who are interested because a few have told me they are looking for something like this. We do have a co-0p in our area but the last time I checked into it the lady who runs it is from NY and nobody had any info on it to give me. I should look around again and see if I can find more out about it. I can't start a co-0p now because things are so busy at my house and I will need to wait until my hubby finishes our bathroom and puts up our ceiling blocks in the living room. He will have all of that (and I hope even more) done by spring so if I start trying out projects and putting them on this blog starting in Jan. I should have enough stuff prepared to start doing things with a group of children by spring. That is what I am going to try for anyway. We will have to see how it goes.