Santa and Ice Decorations

Today we read  Jolly Old Santa Claus by Alice Leedy Mason and George Hinke

This is the condensed board book version but it still features some of the beautiful oil paintings by George Hinke. The story line seems a bit cut up in this version though. Alex enjoyed looking at the pictures and pointing out details that he thought were interesting. We do have a paper back version too, but Alex's attention span isn't that long to listen to the whole story.


After reading about Santa we made a hand print Santa. I helped Alex put white paint on his hand and then stamp it on a piece of blue paper. We then added a face and hat out of construction paper, some googly eyes and cotton balls. We added a couple of craft foam snowflakes to the background. It came out very cute.

A few days ago I saw this post by the Artful Parent and have been wanting to try making natural ice wreath and ornaments. The idea is very easy just add water and some colorful berries or leaves into a containers, add a string for hanging and freeze. It was about 20 degrees today so it was plenty cold enough. We bundled up and went out around our yard to find some colorful leaves and berries. It was cold!!! We quickly found some stuff to use, we put them together inside because it was so cold.

He was cold and was giving me the evil eye

leaves and berries we found

Alex making the wreath

working on the ornaments

I added strings to each one and put them outside to freeze

A preview

Its dark out now, so I will post pictures of them all frozen and hanging up tomorrow.


I'm linking up to Kids Get Crafty and the Play Academy