Monthly play roundup: November & December

And so finally we come to the last installment of my monthly play roundup series for the year. I’ve decided to combine November and December into one post as the second half of December usually runs into the holiday season with things starting to wind down. But I’ll do a separate post on some of the end-of-year celebrations and holiday highlights. But for now, here’s a roundup of the activities we’ve been busy with over these last couple of months…

‘I Need a Hug’
A recent favourite book we picked up from the library last month that we’ve read together umpteen times is ‘I Need a Hug’ by Aaron Blabey. The story is about a sad (and cute) little porcupine who really needs a hug. But then who would be willing to hug a porcupine. We made good use of our leftover playdough with some toothpicks and googly eyes to make our own little porcupines. The children adored their little porcupines and hugged them (gently) all day. We also gathered a few other animal toys to play out the story together.

‘The Tiger Who Came to Tea’
Another favourite book last month was ‘The Tiger Who Came to Tea’ by Judith Kerr. It was a perfect story to go along with the children’s regular tea party pretend play. We made a tiger mask and took turns being the tiger who greedily ate and drank up everything at the tea table.

Talking about Shadows
With no shortage of sunny days these past few months, we’ve had plenty of opportunity to notice our shadows. The children had been showing great interest in observing their shadows whenever we headed outside. I picked up two books from the library ‘The Black Rabbit’ by Philippa Leathers and ‘Foggy Foggy Forrest’ by Nick Sharrat. We set up a simple shadow puppet theatre using a bedsheet and a table lamp and had lots of fun playing shadow guessing games and doing some storytelling with various toys and props to create shadows.

Decorating Christmas Gingerbread Biscuits
With Christmas around the corner, we’ve been baking up lots of goodies and treats in the kitchen. And of course no Christmas is complete without decorating the classic gingerbread biscuits.

Ninjago Birthday Party
We also had an early celebration for Nathan’s birthday in Ninjago style (by specific request of the birthday boy). I’ll share more about this in a separate post, but here’s a little sneak peak of some of the goodies from the party

Christmas Presents
I rounded off the year with sewing up a storm of a whole bunch of homemade Christmas gifts for all my kids, including a reversible tote for each of them (which I completely forgot to take a photo of any before giving them all away). But I am especially proud of these travel chalkboard mats I made for a couple of the kids going away on holidays to keep them busy while they’re on the plane.

 

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Thank you so much for following me on this series. It was often challenging to keep up with the heaps of activities we do every week and distil them down into a few highlights for this monthly roundup. But I hope you have found it interesting to get a glimpse into some of the things that have been keeping me busy throughout the year. Happy holidays and see you in the new year!