December Fun

I am seriously behind on writing posts for my blog so just clearing some out some of the December photos with brief descriptions…

Last summer I had bought some waffle bowls for ice cream but nobody liked them and they were just going stale in the cupboard. I decided they could be put to use as ‘gingerbread’ houses for the toddlers.

We simply used cereal for decorations and ‘glued’ the pieces on by dipping them in icing.

 

 

Some chose to make a ‘hat with a pompom’

 

 

The bowls were fragile so if you used too much decorating force you created a ‘bear cave’

 

 

Some chose to create… a bowl for their cereal LOL

 

 

Everyone seemed to really enjoy this activity and because process is much more valuable than product I was fine with our non-traditional gingerbread houses until…my husband came home and said ‘Cool, you made yurts’. Huh, I should have thought of that.

Of course in December we also had to take advantage of my school bus driver husband being off work and able to do fire duty (it is too risky for me to watch both toddlers and fire by myself). We didn’t cook our whole lunch on the fire as we have in the past but bannock cooked on the fire is sooo good.

Add homemade Christmas Jam supplied by one of the children’s parents…

 

and we don’t care how cold it is..mitts are off and it is time to eat!

Pumpkin Tarts

Pumpkins are popular around here. We collect pumpkin seeds and plant them in our garden – sometimes they grow. We use pumpkins for decorations – usually we just paint the shell so we can still use the inside for our favourite pumpkin activity – baking!

I’ve previously written about making pumpkin pie with the children in 2012 and again in 2016 but it was a new experience for my current group of toddlers. This time we decided to make tarts instead of pie – a smaller product for my little one and two year olds.
First we removed the seeds;

Then we cut the softened pumpkin to practice some knife skills;

We measured all the ingredients and of course had to smell the spices;

The toddlers found mixing and mashing to be the most exciting part of the process;

Everyone got a turn to use the ladle to fill the tart shells before baking. There were enough tarts that each child got to take some home to share.

Of course we also got to eat some for snack too!