By Stephanie Merriman
Making things special while keeping them simple is certainly the blueprint of how we’ve been celebrating the holidays this year! Christmas, especially, as our girls are right at the most energetic and busiest stages (at 1 and 4 years old) – in addition to much of our time being spent close to home.
For our 4-year-old daughter, I intentionally created a few fun things around the story and lesson of, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”, by including her senses of touch, taste and smell. Sure to be a memory-maker experience! A few of the activities and food even allowed our youngest daughter to take part! As an attempt to make a weekend feel like a holiday weekend.
Here is what we did…
#1 Kid-friendly + healthy Rudolph-themed breakfast
We used the following foods to create a healthy Rudolph breakfast to get our girls excited about the story of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”
- Head – Vanilla yogurt
- Nose – Raspberry
- Eyes – Blue berry
- Antlers – toast cut into antler shape
#2 Introducing the story – Reading time
One parent cleaned up breakfast while the other sat down and read the girls a short story version of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” After reading the story, we highlighted that it’s our differences which can be our strengths and talked about how kindness is key in making others feel good – thus making ourselves feel good too.
#3 Family walk – Gathering crafts supplies
Next we walked behind our house to gather a few small twigs so that our Rudolph paper plate craft would have some antlers and to get some fresh air as a family.
Our 1.5 year old was even able to help!
#4 Rudolph crafts
Back inside, it was time to craft! Here’s a quick breakdown of how we made our own Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer paper plate craft.
Supplies
- Paper plates x2
- Brown/tan paint
- Black construction paper
- Red/maroon construction paper
- Glue
- Scissors
- Sticks (mini sized)
- Glitter (optional)
- Pink construction paper (optional)
Instructions – What we made
1. Cut deer head shape out of paper plate x2
2. Next paint one of the deer head shapes
3. Cut out eyes, nose + ears
4. Glue eyes, nose + ears to tan painted paper plate
5. Glue two mini sticks from the family walk on the top of paper plate that isn’t painted (as shown)
6. Glue the two deer head pieces together (painted + non painted)
7. Enjoy your final piece!
Extra Ideas…
Add glue + glitter to the antlers for an eye-catching sparkle!
+ or switch up the red nose to pink!
Then lastly, to complete the day..
#5 Watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
As a family (minus our 1.5 year old in bed) we snuggled up and watched the story of “Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer” to make the day, craft, and reading lesson come to life for her and us.
About the author
Stephanie runs the website, Mama Jots which specializes in making things special yet simple, by living motherhood creatively in classic and modern style. Biweekly, she shares an original paper plate craft design on all her social media channels which includes how-to videos to help you learn fun and simple ways to create art with your little ones. Stephanie encourages her community of women in motherhood to create their own personalized colors, crafts and holiday traditions, to turn into memories for themselves and their children.
All images on this page belong to Stephanie Merriman / @mama.jots.
Comments are closed.