Christmas Handprints

Ok, so this one is a little delayed. Let's just call it inspiration for next Christmas!

One of the recurring activities in our advent calendar this year was making Christmas crafts. One of the first crafts that we made back in early December was Christmas themed hand prints.

As you've probably noticed, we're quite fond of making hand print creations. We've made hand print flags for 4th of July and turkeys, pilgrims and native Americans for Thanksgiving. This time around we made Santa and his reindeer.

Here's a look at how we made them...

For Santa, I painted the base of the girls hands and their thumbs red for Santa's hat. I painted their fingers white for his beard and added a little more white on the sides on their hands and along the edge of the red. This left a section in the middle of their palms which I painted a flesh colour for Santa's face.

Ava's Santa hand ready to print

Snow and Reindeer in San Francisco

Christmas may be over for another year (in fact, it's already new year!) but our advent calendar still had one more activity for the girls. Some time in the week before Christmas the advent calendar's activity for the day was "Visit the reindeer at California Academy of Science". Unfortunately we were a little busy with Christmas preparations so we had to put our visit off until the end of last week. On Friday we made the most of our annual membership and visited the Academy one last time for the year.

That place has got to be one of our favourite destinations for an afternoon of exploration - especially during the holiday season. Snow flurries in the Piazza and live reindeer in the East Garden are just a part of the 'Tis the Season for Science exhibit - our favourite parts no less!

The girls were enchanted by the snow flurries in the Piazza. Ava worked out pretty quickly that the "snow" was really just some sort of soap foam (shampoo according to her) but she still enjoyed it none the less - although she refused to try and catch it on her tongue like Lola and their friend Solly!

Here's a look at the kids enjoying the flurries...

Ava, Lola and Solly in a flurry of snow