) and unwrapped the ornaments, talking about where each one came from (often, who made it or where we bought it while on vacation). And once we had been through them all, we segwayed into a game of I spy with the ornaments. This reminded me of an idea that I had last year. I created a quick book with photos of some of our ornaments. I did a bit of a cheat here. I used iPhoto to create a book, and then just saved the PDF and printed it for our quick use. If I were going to purchase a book (which I might - I really think this would be a fun keepsake), then I would take photos with a better background than our old doodler, and I might add some information about each ornament, to make it more interesting in the longterm.
I've uploaded our book just to give you an idea of what ours looked like (sometimes he dictated the text to me, so the language may sound a bit awkward here and there):
Ispy Christmas Book
Now that our tree is up, we use the pages to play I spy with the tree. If it seems too ambitious to take photos and upload them all, then you could also just do a quick word book -- "I spy an angel,"
"a Santa," "a reindeer," "something green," etc.
Companion Book --
The Bibliophile recieved I Spy Christmas last year,
when he had just turned 2. I think it is time to dig it out again this holiday season. It is a nice level of challenging without being frustrating.I will be linking this post up with Tot Tuesday, We Play, STart, ABC 123, Play Academy, Our Worldwide Play, and Sunday Best.
Comment! Are your ornaments, like ours, a mismatched group of homemade and sentimental keepsakes, or do you have a perfectly coordinated/themed tree each year?
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9 comments:
I love this idea.
I'm 40yrs old and my mother saved every single ornament that I made lol we have ornaments from 1972 on through to last year. Our tree just gets bigger and bigger to accomodate them. With four boys our tree is packed!
My husband and I are terrible about getting trees. In fact, our son is going to be three in March and this is the first time in our five year marriage, ten year relationship that we have EVER bought a tree. Oops! SO, we have very few ornaments, mostly lights, this year but I have a feeling that Kai (son) will be contributing to the ones we have, pretty soon and abundantly! ;O)
Our tree is mismatched, mostly hand made, and usually bare from three feet down, because no matter how many ornaments I put there, they never STAY put!
Great Christmas activity. Up to this year our tree has been always color themed - red or silver. But yesterday we received three very special ornaments as a present, and even my "design-oriented" husband proposed to start making "a memory tree" instead. We have some ornaments given to us by relatives and friends and will probably start adding special things to it every year.
What a fabulous thing to do. My 6yr old still loves the I Spy books, and you've reminded me to hunt out the Christmas one!
Ours is a combination. We have some of homemade, some antique and some newer Hallmark ornaments. My parents have been buying my husband the Hallmark classic cars ornaments every year since we were married. Obviously those cars are my son's favorites!
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Our tree is very much a mash-up of various ornaments. I have some from my childhood, some that we have constructed ourselves, some that were gifts, some we purchased on purpose, etc..
As a tradition I buy each of the children co-ordinating ornaments every year, and write the year on them, so that when they grow up and move into their own homes they will have a collection for their 1st tree. As well as tons of memories :)
We love retelling the stories of our special ornaments (and how fab are those boxes, wish I could find something like that!). Immy (at almost 3) has just discovered the I Spy books so I might have to seek out the Christmas one as well :)
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