Pipe Cleaner Christmas Ornaments

It's Christmas Eve. We've made Christmas cookies, We've read a few Christmas stories (e.g. Llama Llama Jingle Bells. Cute book). We've watched quite a few Thomas & friends Christmas episodes. And we've made lots of Christmas crafts at the library. Among them, Little Guy liked and was good at making these pipe cleaner ornaments, so I got the materials and we've been making lots more at home. I was impressed that he threaded the beads through with little difficulty and was actually enjoying doing it. This seems to be a good practice for fine motor skills and to learn colors. And the end results are beautiful ornaments. Love it.

Materials

12" Pipe cleaners (need three 6" pipe cleaners for each ornament)

Beads

String (if you hang from a tree)

How to Make

1. Cut a pipe cleaner in half by scissors and make three half pieces (Mama did this in our case)

2. Lay the three half-size pipe cleaners like a snowflake and twist them together at the center to keep its shape (Mama did this too)

3. String some beads

4. If hang from a tree, fold one end a bit to make a loop and put a string

That's it!

To my adult's mind, I thought clear sparkly beads on silver pipe cleaners would make the prettiest ornaments and suggested that we buy clear beads. But Little Guy insisted on colorful solid color ones, so I obliged. It seems Little Guy was right. What he made were most beautiful, if I do say so myself :)

I hope everyone will have a wonderful Christmas/winter holiday :)

Happy 3 Year Old!

I hope all of you are having a joyous holiday season :)

Our family celebrates one additional event during this fun but busy season, which is Little Guy's birthday! And he turned three! He's so proud he's three now and telling everyone he meets that he's three years old using his three little fingers. so cute.

If you've been following my facebook page or instagram account, it's quite apparent that Little Guy LOVES Thomas and his friends. So naturally this year's birthday theme was set to Thomas and his friends. I found a few Thomas themed cakes on pinterest, but Little Guy liked this one the most so we decided to make one. It turned out really fun and cute! 

Following the original picture, I used graham crackers and mini oreos for the trains to carry the cupcakes, a whole piece for the top base, two quarter pieces to connect the mini oreo wheels. Differently from the original, I used melted chocolate to connect all the pieces (and this was super yummy).

Little Guy's new train buddy, Stephen. Looks like he's quite a popular guy among Thomas fans. I heard a few boys saying "Look! Stephen!" when Little Guy was carrying Stephen while shopping.

For the main meal, I used this train onigiri kit we found on our recent trip to Japan to make some sushi to keep the train theme.

And a couple of train sandwiches, cut out by train shaped cookie cutters.

Little Guy loved his birthday so much that he kept saying "I love my birthday!" for the next few days. We're so happy he liked his birthday party. Happy Happy Birthday Little Guy.

My little brother is growing up

"Now my little brother is old enough to give me some fresh water! :)"

Long time no see (again! ugh). Just a quick update today. I wanted to share this cute photo of Mochi and Little Guy. Things have slowly started to settle here. Hopefully I can write more regularly soon.

Color Matching Parking Activity Mat

I saw this color matching car mat on Pinterest and I had to try it. Little Guy loves cars and has recently started to get really interested in the color names (like he has to point out the color of every item he sees at a grocery store). So I thought it'd be a great time to try this activity, and happily I was right. And we made it even more fun by making it together (which is why the parking spaces are not neatly lined up).

It's kind of self-explanatory but I used one piece of 12" x 12" scrapbooking paper as a base. I had a piece of map patterned paper so I used it to make streets between the parking spaces (now my paper stash has finally started to pay off lol). I chose a various colors of cardstock according to the colors of the cars Little Guy had and cut into smaller pieces. I think it was 1.5" x 3.5" but don't remember exactly. I put glue on the back of each piece and handed it to Little Guy so he could place it on the base paper. I just felt so thrilled that now we could create something together :)

Little Guy didn't know what this was at first. So I "drove" one of his cars saying "I'm green, where can I park?" and parked in one of the green spaces. After several times, he started to point to the correct color spot. Now he loves it and sometimes even plays this game on his own :)

I'm thinking that when he gets bored with color matching, I'm going to write numbers on the parking spaces to make it a number matching game too. We'll see.

If you're interested in other inspiring educational projects for toddlers and preschoolers that I found on pinterest, please follow one of my pinterest boards "home preschool ideas".