Check out our kid-crafted gift tags this week on Childhood 101. These are fun, engaging and the results were amazingly pretty too.

This was the project that stained my feet blue for a few days; completely worth it.

Visit Childhood 101 and find out how to make these gorgeous homemade gift tags with your kids.

More Activities for Preschoolers

Three to Five: Playful Preschool is stuffed to the brim with tried, tested and loved playful learning ideas for preschoolers. There are 25+ ideas for preschoolers, ten printable resources and additional links to over 50 more activities. A great resource for parents. Download your copy here.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment; I’d love to hear from you. If you are new here, you might like to receive updates direct to your email. We have many fun ideas to share.

The post Making Homemade Gift Tags with Kids by Pauline appeared first on Lessons Learnt Journal.

Would you believe it? It’s the 5th of December, and our Christmas Tree is still in storage… a fact that our kids don’t let us forget easily! It may be the proximity to the end of the year, the fun parties and gatherings at this time of year, the usual mayhem that life with kids brings, but I honestly feel like time passes super quickly in December.

So while I run around like a mad, headless chook, I am so excited to share these 10 wonderful Christmas Nativity Activities for Kids. There are so many great ways to playfully remember the wonderful gift of rescue, through Jesus.

Happy playing, because #playmatters.

P.S. If you’re reading this in an e-mail or reader, click HERE to see all of the great Christmas Nativity Activities for Kids.

• DIY Little Town of Bethlehem via Lessons Learnt Journal
• Easy Paper Plate Homemade Angel Wings via Lessons Learnt Journal
• Mini Paper Angels via The Craft Train
• Nativity Story Stones via My Little Bookcase
• Toilet Roll Nativity Set via Happy Hooligans
• Simple Nativity Song via Lets Play Kids Music
• Make Your Own Nativity Scene via An Idea on Tuesday
• 3 Kings via Red Ted Art
• The Christmas Adventure Box via Being Confident of This
• Matchbox Manger Craft via The Craft Train

Have you been featured this week? I would love for you to take one of our Featured at Lessons Learnt Journal badge.

Some of these ideas are from our Kids’ Co-Op. If you have a child focused post to share, be sure to come back and visit the Kids’ Co-Op link up here at Lessons Learnt Journal, (published and live here every Wednesday at 10PM CST or Thursday 3PM AEST).

More Activities for Preschoolers

Three to Five: Playful Preschool is stuffed to the brim with tried, tested and loved playful learning ideas for preschoolers. There are 25+ ideas for preschoolers, ten printable resources and additional links to over 50 more activities. A great resource for parents. Download your copy here.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment; I’d love to hear from you. If you are new here, you might like to subscribe to our RSS feed or receive updates direct to your email. We have many fun ideas to share.

The post Christmas Nativity Activities for Kids by Pauline appeared first on Lessons Learnt Journal.

Christmas came and behold, she gave me a gift. Six year old me politely said thanks and gave it to my Mum. Six year old me did not realise that my friend was expecting a gift in return; after all she had told me all these weeks leading up to Christmas that she was giving me a gift for Christmas.

Gift giving puzzled me. It was clearly not my love language.I have since learnt that giving and receiving gifts is a way to express love.

The English word “gift” comes from the Greek word “charis”, which means “grace, or an undeserved gift.”  If something is earned, then it’s a payment. A gift, in contrast, is an expression of love for the individual and is freely given.

Christmas is an important time of year and a wonderful opportunity to teach children many truths. Learning about meaningful gift giving is a valuable lesson.

DIY Christmas Gifts: Painted Bowls

Painted bowls are an easy and fun DIY Christmas gift.

Materials:

• air dry stay-on enamel paints (some enamel paints are not recommended for surfaces that come in contact with food, so just to be safe, don’t paint the inside of your bowls);
• brushes;
• bowls (we purchased ours for only $1.50 each at the dollar shop).

Method:

1. Clean the bowls with soapy water, rinse and dry. Make sure the surface to be painted is completely dry.
2. Using a clean, dry brush, paint your bowls using your enamel paints. (If you want really even layers, you can apply some enamel paint surface conditioner first before painting).
3. Let your painted bowls fully dry and harden (about 10 days).

As we were painting our DIY Christmas gifts, Mr N (a now very chatty 4 year old) narrates his painting, “I’m painting a stripe here, and some spots. Yes, this one is for [G],”

The grace of giving has has everything to do with love. A gift reminds the receiver that they were thought about and loved.

God’s amazing gift to us is the forgiveness of our sins through Jesus. We don’t deserve this nor did we do anything to earn this. It’s a gift.

More Activities for Preschoolers

Three to Five: Playful Preschool is stuffed to the brim with tried, tested and loved playful learning ideas for preschoolers. There are 25+ ideas for preschoolers, ten printable resources and additional links to over 50 more activities. A great resource for parents. Download your copy here.

The post DIY Christmas Gifts: Painted Bowls by Pauline appeared first on Lessons Learnt Journal.

I’m all for keeping Advent simple and over the next few weeks in the lead up to Christmas, I’ll be reading Christmas bible stories with my kids and doing simple playful Christmas crafts, to enjoy the stories together. We kicked off our advent activities with a super fun and easy Christmas craft for kids: DIY angel wings. This week, to keep playing and to further build up our excitement about the coming of Jesus, we created a little town of Bethlehem.

The story for our second playful Advent activity is from Luke 2:1-7. In this story, Jesus was born in a crowded town of Bethlehem, and was laid in a manger.

After reading the story, and before we started creating our Bethlehem Town kids craft, we looked up where Bethlehem was situated on the world map. We talked about its location relative to Africa and Europe, (in particular, Italy as N&M have been learning about Italy at preschool).

This Bethlehem Town kids craft requires the most minimal of craft materials. All we used were TP rolls, markers, scissors and some sticky tape (you don’t really need the tape, it’s just that N&M can’t get enough of the stuff). 

They set about drawing windows on their town buildings. They made some doors and experimented with some ‘shade’ structures above the doors (i.e. those cardboard flaps above the doors). M drew the stables where baby Jesus was born. He drew Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus.

As we created the little town of Bethlehem, we talked about how unusual Jesus’ birth was. It was, and is, not normal for a baby to be born in a stable, where animals stay. It was, and is, not normal for a baby to be placed in a manger, where animals feed from.

“It’s so dirty,” M kept saying. N reasoned that Bethlehem was very crowded, and there was no where else to go. I added that this was no ordinary baby. This was the Son of God, who was born in a dirty stable and placed in a dirty manger. He could have been born anywhere really – when you think about it. He certainly had the power to, after all, he was the Son of God. I could see them trying to wrap their minds around all of that. It’s mind blowing really – when you think about it.

We brought out our Christmas fairy lights and added it to our Bethlehem townscape. It’s amazing how much more fun some simple lights can add to a play scene. 

What makes Christmas special for you and your kids? It would be fabulous if we could all share our Christmas ideas here. Are there  traditions you’ve grown up with? Have you tried something with your kids and it’s been loved to bits? Or have you tried something that hasn’t quite worked? Found or seen something online that just totally knocks your socks off? I’d love to pin ideas to my Pinterest boards, I’d love to share ideas on our Facebook Page. Let’s pool everyone’s wisdom together and get excited about Christmas together.

More Activities for Preschoolers

Three to Five: Playful Preschool is stuffed to the brim with tried, tested and loved playful learning ideas for preschoolers. There are 25+ ideas for preschoolers, ten printable resources and additional links to over 50 more activities. A great resource for parents. Download your copy here.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment; I’d love to hear from you. If you are new here, you might like to receive updates direct to your email. We have many fun ideas to share.

The post Christmas: Bethlehem Town Kids Craft by Pauline appeared first on Lessons Learnt Journal.