Gingerbread Storytime

Christmas is quickly approaching and this week we read A Cookie for Santa by Stephanie Shaw which is about a gingerbread man.  To go along with our gingerbread book, we made no cook cinnamon ornaments.  The dough was really easy to make and smelled amazing.

I got the recipe here and it was really easy to make.  We altered the recipe a little bit to get a more gingerbread smell and it worked perfectly.
You'll need:

• 1 cup of flour
• 1/2 cup of salt
• 1/2 cup of cinnamon 
• 3/4 cup of very warm water 

(Note:  we 1/4 cup of cinnamon and 1/4 cup of clove to make the dough smell like gingerbread)

Throw all the ingredients in a bowl and start smooshing it around.  Before you know it, you have the most amazing smelling dough.
Roll the dough out and and cut with cookie cutters.  I gave the kids jewels to push into the dough to add a little sparkle.  Use a straw to make a hole at the top of the ornament for a ribbon.  It takes about 24 hours for the dough to fully harden.  I also did this craft with some older kids and we painted our ornaments with acrylic paint.  You can paint your ornaments before they're dry, which is nice because waiting is hard!

Snowman Storytime

This week we talked about snowmen.  We don't actually have any snow right now but I can't miss an opportunity to do a snowman themed storytime!  There are so many great books and cute crafts about snowmen.  We read, Snowmen All Year by Caralyn Buehner and Sneezy the Snowman by Maureen Wright.

                                                                                     
                                                     









We did a really fun snowman craft that I've dubbed "The Melting Snowman."  They turned out so cute and the kids really got a kick out of making their snowman "melt."

Our snowmen consisted of three circles (small, medium, and large) that are connected with brads.  When you fold the snowman in on himself, he looks like he's melted.  So cute!

                       

Snow Storytime

Today's storytime was themed around snow.  December is such a fun month for storytime because there are lots of great winter books and craft ideas.  Today we read, Clifford's First Snow Day by Norman Bridwell and Snow by Roy Mckie.

For today's craft made snow globe pictures.  I brought in a snow globe for the kids to see because I wasn't sure all of them would know what a snow globe is.

I cut out circles for the globe part and freehand drew a base for the globe.  Then I cut out little pine trees to go inside the snow globe pictures.

Once everyone had assembled their snow globes, I gave them some puffy paint to make the "snow."
I like to use the puffy paint whenever possible because it's really fun.  It is just a mixture of equal parts white glue and shaving cream.  If you want to color it, you can add food coloring or paint.  I left today's puffy paint white so it would resemble snow and added a little glitter.
Here are the finished results.

Here is the one I made

Here are a few made by the kids

Here is a view of the puffy paint from the side so you can see how puffy it dries.