Countdown To Christmas!

At the recent MIA "Mama's Got Talent," I was inspired by Amy to do more crafts with Brady. I really like the idea of having an advent theme (as my sister and others do), but I did not plan for it ahead of time and with Smiles' surgery being on the 1st of December, it just did not happen for this year. However, I loved the idea of having some sort of countdown - Classic Mama gave me the idea of using a sheep (we focus on the birth of Jesus at Christmas)! (Thanks, Classic!)

So, I searched the Internet and found a sheep project (Here is another cute one.). I printed out the sheep on card stock, and then used a nickel to make 25 circles on the paper. I used tiny foam letters in different colors to spell "countdown to" - it was Dawson's idea to use these colorful letters and arrange it like a string of lights.

I wrote out the word "CHRISTMAS" at the bottom of the paper (as you can see) and then I scanned it for you to see what it looks like - it came out a little dark, but you get the idea.
On Thursday, Brady found this on the dining room table and was SOOOOOOO excited - he loves animals! I told him that we would be doing a craft with it later, and he got even MORE excited! So, this is what we did. I gave Brady a Ziploc bag that contained large foam letters to spell "Christmas" and eleven cotton balls. He dumped it out and then he began to peel the backing off of the letters and placed them over the letters that I wrote - he did a great job (I have not downloaded those pics yet!).

We worked together on the cotton balls. Brady told me that he did not want to get glue on his fingers, so I put the glue on the number and he placed the cotton ball on it. We also practiced counting and recognizing all of the numbers while we did this craft. He recognizes 1-9 and can count from 1-12, 14 and 16, so this will be a good activity to do and practice saying the numbers each day. Today we added another cotton ball and did another craft with Noah's ark foam (that Brady picked out at the craft store).

Brady and I had so much fun doing this activity together, and I have two more ready to go! Amy totally inspired me to start doing more crafts with Brady and I am so excited! I actually went to the craft store on Wednesday and bought some things to get me started: googly eyes, foam sheets, foam letters and foam Noah's ark, pony beads, and pipe cleaners! I am going to go back and pick up a few more things - like little pom-poms for noses! Now, I am going to need to find some more activities to do! :)

Do you have any suggestions for easy and fun toddler activities?