Christmas magic | Grey Skies & Rainbow Highs

Happy December!

A new month means there’s new things to explore and discover. This month, we’re doing a Christmas Sensory Play. The most fun part of this sensory bin is everything is bought from the dollar store!

We love Christmas and all the joy it brings to us. I think Mila is mostly excited for snow and Santa to bring presents. To combine that happiness and interest, I thought this Christmas Sensory Play idea was the best of both worlds!

This sensory bin is filled with:

Different types of fake snow
Jingle bells
Chocolate Kisses
Santa stickers
Refrigerator organizer

As I said before, I got this entire bin at the dollar store! Everything was pretty cheap and easy to put together. All I did was dump the three different types of fake snow in the refrigerator organizer.

If I could give one fake snow suggestion, I’d tell everyone not to get the small foam balls. They get EVERYWHERE and stick to everything. We could have done with just the glitter snow and the medium sized foam balls. It would have worked just as well.

Anyways, then I hid chocolate kisses underneath so Mila could find surprises.

The next things I added were the jingle bells. I had a ton of different sized and colored bells. This is important for one of the activities that I’ll explain.

To make it a little more festive, I added five, felt Santa stickers. They’re so cute!

There’s seriously a ton of activities you can do with this Christmas Sensory Bin.

The first is just letting your child explore the sensory bin. There they can find the chocolate kisses, feel the different types of snow, or use their imaginations. Mila loves when I don’t give her directions and she just does whatever.

One activity that I directed her in was sorting the bells. You could have them sort by color or size. This provide a ton of different skills.

I also had her count the Santas too. There’s a ton of math that kids can do that will help!

In all, this Christmas Sensory Bin is festive and educational. Kids will love it and you’ll love that they’re learning and having fun.

Do you have any suggestions of Christmas play? I have a few, but I’m definitely up for more ideas. Also, what are you most excited for this Christmas season?

It’s officially time to start getting festive. Our Christmas tree is up and indoor decorations are done. With all these bucket list items getting crossed off, we had to do another… write a letter to Santa.

I mean.. there’s less than a month until Christmas, we HAD to make sure he knew what Mila wanted this year.

The letter to Santa is very important in the eyes of kids who believe in him. When Mila realized that Santa was going to see her letter, she had that look Ralphie did in A Christmas Story.

It was all very official business.

After brainstorming her thoughts for the letter out loud, she decided it was time to write. Since Mila only knows how to spell her name at the moment, I got to help her out a little in the writing and spelling part of this.

Her letter to Santa states:

“Dear Santa,

How do you do? Thank you for giving me Christmas presents. I would like a big doctor thing.

Thanks, Mila”

She’s a lady that knows what she want! Hopefully she’ll actually become a doctor one day since that’s the only thing she wants at the moment. Besides becoming a mommy like me… her words.

Anyways, I wanted to share this big moment because there’s a lot of learning going on in this simple letter.

Not only did she practice her writing skills and can prove she can remember and write her name, she drafted and wrote a letter! That’s pretty big for a three year old. Just because she didn’t physically write it, doesn’t mean there wasn’t any thought or work put into it.

It also showed her emotional intelligence with the thank you’s and asking Santa how he was doing.

These are all social skills that are all important to learn… simply by just writing a fun letter to Santa! Learning really is everywhere you look.

Fingers crossed Santa gets her letter in time. She used special stamps to help it travel quickly.

I’ll keep you all updated on if he does.

You can find the ‘Letter to Santa’ template at The Letter Vee. Some of the other stamps come from Three Little Crumbsnatchers, she also has the cutest Christmas activities you can print out for free. I’ll be posting them this December, so keep your eyes peeled.

Does your child or did they write letters to Santa? I’m thinking of recording Mila too. I think it would be cute to look back on. Let me know in the comments if you think that’s a fun idea or not.