Toddler Tuesday: Nativity

I apologize in advance for all the photos, but this has been a stellar week. This week is nativity themed. I made this nativity for Panda stealing borrowing heavily from this woman. Panda LOVES it! I've been putting the pieces in straw for a sensory bin this week. The straw gets absolutely everywhere in the house, but it's worth it. As I finished the pieces I set them out for Panda to find. Each morning he rushed out to see if there was a new piece. I'm a little sad it's done, but he has been playing with it daily... Just maybe not the way most people would....

 This lovely mosaic was his idea and he did a good 97% of this. I helped with the animals. We've also had airplanes dive-bombing the nativity and this morning viking raiders descended. But my personal favorite....

 was the day dinosaurs took over and a T-Rex made off with baby Jesus.

Instead of one book we have four for the next two weeks. Panda likes all of them for different reasons. Some he likes the pictures and will sit perfectly still for, others he likes the rhythm of the words. It looks like he is ignoring me till I stop reading and then hewill come over and insist I continue.

 We pretended to make gold bars out of legos and then wrapped them as gifts in a wet wipe box. But the actual activity I found on Pinterest (what DID we do before Pinterest?)

We made a Camel run with stuffed animals. Panda had to jump his donkey over the animals and say "Jump" each time. We also worked on the words "Over" "under" and so forth. He had a lot of fun and it really worked on his language skills.

 Lets not forget crafts! Panda touched GLUE! I'm so proud of him. Our Angel hand print wings didn't turn out quite as perfect as I had hoped, but I am rather fond of them.

He had fun painting.

and wrapping a cardboard star in yarn, this was a bit tricky, but he really focused on it.

 This was an invitation for play that I set up for Panda. The picture of him playing with Bear was to cute not to add in. This was another attempt to pull more words out of him and let him just have time for creative play. 

 Dress up has also been big lately in preparation for Panda's first Christmas Pageant.

Panda would be the lamb that refused to wear his ears (or sing, or walk) on the left. The poor lil guy wasn't feeling well, but it was a good night.

A bit long of a post, but a lot of fun. Now that we are stretching our play out for two weeks at a time there are more activities. Happy Winter Solstice and Merry Christmas.

Shine on!