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Thursday, November 17, 2011

Helping an almost four year old wait

I am NOT a patient person.  When I decided I want my haircut, I want it that day.  If I want to do a craft I want to do it now.  I'm sure Stella has gotten a bit of that from me.  In addition, she's not quite four.  Waiting for anything is pure torture when you're that age.  When we have something fun planned we don't usually tell her until a day or so before just because we know how hard it will be.


She is also a little decorating diva, she loves to help me decorate the house and her room (she always says, "let's step back and see how it looks").  All of this to say she is DYING to start decorating for Christmas!  We've been working on a few new things and she wants to put them up so badly she can't stand herself.  I feel like I'm always trying to help her with time by saying, "today is this, tomorrow this" etc until we get to the event we're looking forward to.

I decided to make her a little daily countdown.  She can't read so I needed a way to help her distinguish between the different days.  This is what I came up with:
I put a clipart picture of something happening each day that I could think of to help her visualize (gym, going to Haley's 1st soccer game, Thanksgiving) until finally we get to the last day with the elf representing Bob, our Elf on the Shelf, and the tree.  The day after Thanksgiving we get to go cut down our tree and decorate the house.  She's getting into it and looks forward to crossing of each box at the end of the day.  If I'm honest I'm probably more impatient than she is!

I've also been planned out our advent calendar for this year.  I didn't want to spend as much on them as last year.  Buying things for 24 days adds up even if you're trying to be careful.  I tried to plan some activities and I hit up the $1 section at Target to fill in gaps.  Some of the days may change of course, but I'm hoping to make it a bit easier on myself this year to have the days set ahead of time.  I'm making them each new calendars this year and it needs to have all of the presents ready from the beginning so I'm glad it's done.  Now I just need to finish them up so I can post some pictures!

*Edited to add MORE activity ideas, I can't believe I forgot some of these!!!

~Zoo lights
~make glitter ornaments
~letter to Santa
~sign Stella up for video from Santa
~make magic reindeer food
~pipe cleaner candy canes
~cottonball snow(wo)man
~handprint wreath (fun!)
~paper plate/cottonball santa

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