2 and finally 1 day to go...

Unfortunately we had visitors so the kids were not able to do the activity in box #2. I'll have to keep in mind for next year that the week leading up to Christmas is a bit too busy and I would need to rethink some of the activities I plan for that week.

But... we made sure we did the activity in box #1 :-)


The activity was to make some biscuits and put biscuits and milk (for Santa) and water and carrots (for the reindeer) ready on Christmas Eve.


'twas the night before Christmas and our little tree (aka advent calendar) was bare...

5, 4 and 3 days to go...

Unfortunately this week we didn't really have enough time to do any of the activities. Terence booked Bianca into a holiday programme this week which she absolutely enjoys and unfortunately this meant she came home too late to still do an activity. Which is okay as the activities she is doing at the holiday programme are lots of fun anyway. And Caitlyn's been going to daycare also. We can always catch up on the activities after Christmas again.

One great thing about the little boxes is that it is so easy for Caitlyn to see just how many days are still left and she is so excited for Saturday. She can hardly wait :-)

6 Days to go...

The activity we did was to decorate some masks. I found these cool pre-cut masks from the Warehouse and they were perfect for the girls to decorate. Now I've learned one thing - if you have a choice of stickers, little glittery things to stick, markers and glitter glue pens - the girls will mostly only use the glitter glue pens... and lots of it.

7 Days to go...

:-( Bianca is feeling pretty unwell. She's been having headaches pretty much for most of the day, got car sick on the way to the city this morning (and yes, we had to stop the car and she barely had time to open the door) and when we got home, her temperature was fluctuating between 38 degrees (celcius) and 39 degrees (celcius) even 2 hours after giving paracetamol. So Terence has taken her to the medical center to get checked out. Sigh! Another little box the girls won't be opening tonight.

8 Days to go...

Yesterday Bianca had her 2 monthly blood test and hospital visit with her oncologist and it turned out a long day! Longer than I thought it would. (Read all about it here). By the time we got home, we had to rush to get dinner sorted and it was pouring down with rain and starting to get pretty late so unfortunately we were not able to do the activity I had planned. We were going to take cardboard boxes and make pretend cars out of them. Something like this:


Okay, maybe not quite the flames coming from the back of the car - but something like this.

So the plan was to do this activity this morning and then tonight today's activity. Unfortunately Bianca is feeling really unwell this morning (headache, sore throat) and it looks very much like rain again, so I really don't know if we'll get to do this particular activity today. Oh well, at least it is the thought that counts :-)

9 Days to go...

How exciting! Box #9 means only 9 more days till Christmas. We can hardly wait!


Today's activity was actually a double activity. The clue inside their little boxes was simply a tiny little hand cut drawn on some blue paper. Bianca initially weren't too sure what the activity might be, but when I told her she was pretty excited. A while back, one of the kids' favourite shows was Blue's Clues. Now if you are not familiar with the world of Blue's Clues, you can watch it here.

"Steve, the host, presents the audience with a puzzle involving Blue, the animated dog ... To help the audience unlock the puzzle, Blue leaves behind a series of clues, which are objects marked with one of her paw prints. In between the discovery of the clues, Steve plays a series of games—mini-puzzles—with the audience that are thematically related to the overall puzzle ... As the show unfolds, Steve and Blue move from one animated set to another, jumping through magical doorways, leading viewers on a journey of discovery, until, at the end of the story, Steve returns to the living room. There, at the climax of the show, he sits down in a comfortable chair to think—a chair known, of course, in the literal world of Blue's Clues, as the Thinking Chair. He puzzles over Blue's three clues and attempts to come up with the answer"

As an adult, the show is pretty annoying, but the kids absolutely loved it. And so today we played "Blue's Clues" (or rather Lea's clues - because they were my handprints) to figure out what today's activity would be.

The kids loved looking for and finding the different clues and then drawing the clues into their notebooks:


Once they found all 3 clues, it was time to sit in the "thinking chair":


So what do you get when you have the following clues:

- A house?
- Some lollies / sweets / candy?
- A gingerbread cookie cutter?

That's right! Decorating a gingerbread house. "Wow, you really are smart" (as they would say on Blue's Clues) :-).

Well, to be honest we mostly decorated gingerbread biscuits because my attempt at making a small little gingerbread house wasn't all that great and it turned out pretty sad looking (but I'm sure that tomorrow the girls will be eating it all up anyway, so it doesn't really matter) :-).


Today was certainly a lot of fun!

10 Days to go...

The kids got this in their little boxes as a clue of what the activity would be:

The activity was to string beads to make some cool necklaces. There were some cool beads to choose from:

And Prince Charming was pretty interested in the activity because a moving string is pretty tempting...

Lots of concentration going on...

Wow! Look at this!

11 Days to go...

Today's activity was to make photo frames from cardboard. Both girls love having their own photos in their rooms and so I thought this activity would be perfect.


I cut out the bit that will go at the top of the frame and the girls decorated this mostly with glitter glue.


Once the glitter glue is dry, we will stick this top decorated bit to another piece of white cardboard and the girls will be able to put their photos inside :-)

12 Days to go...

Unfortunately no photos about this activity because we started working on Terence's Christmas present and it is meant to be a surprise. So I will post photos of this activity after Christmas :-)

13 Days to go... (updated)

Unfortunately we didn't manage to finish today's activity. This is because this whole weekend I was busy with this:


... sewing a costume for Bianca's Christmas sing-along tomorrow at school and as I had to do all the sewing by hand and don't have a sewing machine, it took a bit longer to do than I hoped.

Today's activity was to make something for the kids' teachers at school and daycare for Christmas. Both kids started making cards:


And then Bianca made her teacher a bees wax candle from the kit she got for her birthday:


We decided we will be making fudge for the teachers. But unfortunately just ran out of time today so will do this tomorrow after school. I will update this post once we finished the activity :-)

Here is the updated bit:

We finally got round to making our batch of fudge. It was my grandmother's recipe and even though it is a lot of hard work, it is really yummy!


This morning we quickly made a little box so Bianca was able to put some fudge as well as the candle she made to give to her teacher as a Christmas present. We still have to do Caitlyn's to take to her daycare teachers, but we still have a few days before Caitlyn is on holiday for about 2 weeks.

14 Days to go...

Or only 2 more weeks (time really flies)...

Tonight's activity was a fishing activity. We drew little fish and decorated them and then stuck magnetic tape to the bottom and then we made a fishing rod from the bamboo stick of an old witches broom Bianca once bought from the $2 shop and used some embroidery thread and a small magnet and voila! We managed to "catch" our fish :-)

Apologies, the photos aren't very good because the flash on our camera decided to stop working and I had to try and make do with another function. It seems our camera is a bit overworked...

Drawing and decorating our fish:

We then stuck the magnets to the bottom:


How exciting! "Look I caught a fish!"