After my last post, I am back to being in the oh-so captivating Christmas mood.
We are having a major sleep makeover at home. Little A has to leave home as early as 7.30 in the morning for his nursery and with a 3 hour afternoon nap he’d go to bed late in the night and this cozy wintery weather would make it even more difficult for him to wake up in the morning. As a result he’d be too grumpy when I had to shake him off from a deep slumber and furthermore he’d come home half asleep in a school van. So I’ve decided to make him skip a nap during the day-time and tuck him to bed at 7 in the evening. What happens next? The boy who loved to sleep until late mornings is a very happy early riser now besides being a bundle of energy during the day! Also, I wasn’t getting much time to bond with him over some activities considering we didn’t had much time do so since he started going to Kindergarten. Now we get a gratuitous noon time where we pull out our craft supplies, get creative, visit a park or just meet some friends in the same area where we live. It has been a huge relief to adopt this new schedule in our house – no fuss over sleeping time, we are making new friends in the park and in the building we stay, putting our time to some productive use that also involves more hugging and kissing! OK so all that I mentioned camouflaged the alone time parents are getting to earn catching up with old chick flicks or action packed movies at home that had literally died in last couple of years .
The greatest excuse I got in last few days to sit down with Little A was to make some Christmas cards for teachers at his nursery. He was too delighted to make his own greeting cards and present it to the teachers which he’d regularly talk about after coming home. This handmade Christmas card is very easy to put together. Little A loved pulling apart cotton into small pieces from a big roll and stick them onto the card paper. It will be a great fun for children. I kept the card pretty simple for both of us to work together instead of me creating the whole card. While I executed, Little A took major share of participation under my supervision. How much fun it is to get down to our knees and work on the same level as the kids. Though Christmas is a couple of days away, it can be made in a day if you have basic materials at home; like cotton, card paper and white paper. I displayed Santa’s face on the card, but you can choose any that depict season’s theme.
I am not listing down the instructions because there isn’t any. I downloaded the template of Santa’s face, discarding mittens and feet because I didn’t need those. Took a printout and asked Little A to glue face, mustache and beard on the card paper while I guided him. You can cut the card paper in a size you like but make sure there is a room to write a greeting after you have formed Santa’s face. You can use the same cap as in the template but I cut out my own on a red felt paper. You will now have a face of Santa wearing a bright red cap on the card paper which won’t look like himself until you start giving the finishing touches. All that you need to do now is ask children to glue small pieces of cotton on the beard, mustache and a cotton ball at the end of Santa’s hat. Taddaaaa! You are done. You can leave it at that or get creative and make some decorations. It is a one face card and not the flip open one since I kept it very straightforward and child friendly.
We were so proud of our creating and so were the teachers at Little A’s nursery. Do you like to make your own cards?
