Letters to Santa

Today for school, since the kids got done with their math and other subjects so quickly, we did some Christmas crafts. We made our own stationary with thumbprint Christmas lights and then wrote letters to Santa.

 

They turned out spectacular!

 

Garrett was short and sweet - he hates writing, and not even a letter to the big guy up north could coax any extra fru fru out of him!

Emmett was a little disjointed in his thoughts as he dictated his letter. He was more preoccupied with the blueberry candy cane we were having as a school snack! I didn't understand the red bow part, or why he was asking Santa to bring a gift for me, but that's what he wanted!

 The biggest thing I was excited about was that he wrote his whole name for the very first time!! He is such a smart little man, but he is as stubborn as a mule and refuses to do the writing portion of his reading lessons. So getting him to write his name was monumental!

 Teagan's letter was written very much like she talks. Lots of fru fru, lots of friendly, lots of words :-)

 And Owen's came with a lot of questions. I'm not sure if Santa is going to respond to all of his questions, especially since I went and hung all these letters on our craft display wall instead of mailing them!

 The two older kids are both up in the "Santa's helpers" category of life already and I think Owen is teetering on the edge of being there as well. This might be his last year of unknowing so I think it is nice that Teagan and Garrett play along with my silliness - and I have a lot of it!

When Scott read the letters, he was excited that we had nailed their gifts so well in what we got for them. We're already done with all our Christmas shopping, so it's nice that we already know that they will be pleased with what we give them...well, everyone except Teagan. We didn't get her a ticket out to Utah to stay with her friends; and we probably won't! But we have at least one thing on every one's list that we are giving them, so I think that is pretty good. The gifts will be from us, not Santa, because we like to be the cool ones on Christmas morning - Santa leaves little gifts and we give the good stuff!

Afterward writing their letter, we made Christmas mittens. I love hand and footprint art and each holiday I try to add at least one new one to my collection. We already have angels and snowmen and Santa faces and wreaths, so this was a fun and brightly colored addition . I let the kids choose which one they wanted, and this was the winner. I was leaning more toward the reindeer heads footprint or the baby Jesus manger made from a footprint...maybe we'll do another one next week so I can have them do one of the ones I liked best :-)

We were doing this during one of Duncan's naps, so he missed out on the initial painting party, but I did pull him aside late on and helped him make one of his own so he could be represented on our craft wall right along side them.