All Children LOVE to receive mail. I showed the children my last year Christmas cards that my friends and family sent. We learned that one tradition in December was to send Christmas cards to people who we loved, and who we wanted to have a Merry Christmas. We made our cards with two small candy canes forming a heart. I told the children, that they could give their cards to whoever they wanted to as soon as they returned home. We then read a silly book called, The mixed up Christmas Card".
Since we used candy canes to creat a Christmas card, I decided to talk about the candy cane, and why we see them around Christmas time. Candy canes look like a shepard's staff. I demonstrated how a Shepard would use his staff to heard sheep, with a large plastic candy cane. (I hope your children don't start choking others, for when I gave them a regular size candy cane to take home, well...yep, they started to heard each other, and we ended up with some broken candy canes and tears.) So on the topic of shepards, we proceed to talk about the shepards who visited Jesus and gave him a lamb as a present. That is why we see lots of Candy Canes around Christmas time. We then painted a large candy cane. Some picked up on how to "stripe" a candy cane and others just painted their candy cane red. It was all good, because no matter how they turned out, when we turned the candy cane upside down, it made a perfect cradle for a baby Jesus. Gluing craft moss was a lot harder than I realized. The children were convinced it was real hay, and wanted to save it for some real horses and cows. It took some convincing that it wasn't safe hay. However, that just made them concerned for the baby that we were about to glue to the "unsafe hay". Parents, I am truly sorry if your child is now more confused about the whole manger, and hay explanation. Next time I'll use yarn.
Today was definitely a confusing topic of why there are candy canes. Lets just say that little kids don't like peppermint candy canes, and it's a good thing I already knew this and gave them cherry flavored.
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