Jingle Bells!

   Jingle bells, jingle bells,

  Jingle all the way.
  Oh! what fun it is to ride
  In a one-horse open sleigh.
  Jingle bells, jingle bells,
  Jingle all the way;
  Oh! what fun it is to ride
  In a one-horse open sleigh.

Hey Friends,

I am sure you are busy getting ready for Christmas. I miss Christmas in the USA. I think you are fed up with me saying we don't have it here in Egypt. Only Christians here celebrate it,you find some Santa Claus figures in some stores and that's all about it so its spirit at least is not in the air :( It makes me sad!

Do you want to hear some news about us? I'll assume you do and go on and tell you about it. Sarah is going to wear eye glasses and she's so excited about it, I'm not! Farida has an eye infection , as usual! It is not safe or fun to walk in the streets of our country, we are having a second revolution. 

Now let's get into some serious talk, jump in on our fun train and see what we did yesterday. I was trying to revive the Christmas spirit (not in the religious sense) so I prepared a Christmas sensory tub for both girls. I almost had everything on hand except Santa Claus and this one I got from a store here, it was ugly and pricey but glad that Sarah liked it anyway. In order to keep Sarah more focused, I created her a word document with some things to hunt for in the tub,. I put a picture of the item and its name, whenever she finds something, she uses a do-a dot marker to light it. I made candy canes out of fuzzy pipe cleaners.

Here's what's inside:

ornaments
2 small Christmas trees
Santa Claus figure
snowman figure
a gold butterfly
a stocking ornament
Christmas dough cutters (Star, gingerbread, candy cane)
snow flakes
pine cones
red and green dried flower petals
red shiny shreds
bells
a present box 
gems


It was very messy but easy to collect later. Both girls had fun showering with the shreds.

Then, I made a simple face paint using 2 ingredients that I'm sure you have. Crayola paints and lotion, yes, that's all. I found this recipe on Pinterest. Sarah asked for a Christmas tree on her face. I drew a heart on Farida's face, I wasn't sure she was going to stay still of I did something more complicated. It took some more time to dry than the usual face paint but we were satisfied with the final outcome.

This is another idea I found on Pinterest, a felt Christmas tree that can be re-decorated over and over again.

Then, Sarah used tongs to sort some glittery pom poms. She was very focused.

Finally, we read a book about Christmas (I'll talk about it in another post) and Sarah played on some Christmas applications on my phone (coloring, memory games, puzzles and decorating a Christmas tree). It was tons of fun. We of course will do some more crafts about Christmas.

Thank you for being with us.

Love,