Buddies ~ getting festive

*** In September 2011 6 families got together and started Buddies Home School. We meet each week at each other's homes and follow a simple rhythm; music and movement, craft/baking, snack, free play and a story. Each part of the session is led by a different family. We are sharing this week's activites with you here...***

(have you ever seen a cuter Santa?)
We were a little half-a-buddies group today, the other half being sick or unavailable. We hope they all feel better soon. We still had a lovely time today and were starting to get all festive. We sang some carols during music and movement, acting out Away in a Manger

Rudolph the Red Nose Raindeer

and Jingle Bells. Little S really enjoyed the music this week, we could see her starting to copy many of the actions and her grin was just to die for!

We made salt dough christmas tree decorations and candle holders. We used this recipe: 4 cups plain flour, 1 cup salt, 1 - 1.5 cups water (kneed for 4 - 6 mins). It was the first time we tried this recipe and it was great, not sticky and was very easy to work with.

We rolled it out and used Christmasy shape cutters

For the candle holders we made a circle and depressed the middle with a bottle top.

Then we decorated them with dried lentils, peas and beans and made little holes in the tops for ribbon to hang them with.

They came out lovely.

Right now I am baking them in the oven at 100 degrees for an hour, then I'll turn the oven off and let them sit for the rest of the night. This should dry them out enough. We shall finish them next week by painting the candle holders with tempra paint and varnishing the tree decorations with pva glue.

snack time

nap time (heart)

Story time.

Amanda read the Gruffalo's Child with us, it was so much fun and Roisine even had a large and small Gruffalo teddy for us to act it out with.

Next week is our last Buddies session of the year apart from the Christmas party. Looking forward to it already :-)