Rock, Paper, Scissors

Felt is a fantastic, easy, and inexpensive material to use for nearly every craft. In this case, use felt to make your own (friendly) monster finger puppets. Hot glue or sew a finger puppet and then add various parts to them, including crazy eyes, big crooked noses, horns, yarn hair, blue teeth, and lots of arms. Let your child's imagination go wild! Because they’re monsters, you can do anything and it will look cool. Read some monster books for inspiration, including Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, Go Away, Big Green Monster by Ed Emberley, and Leonardo, The Terrible Monster by Mo Willems.

These are also great gifts to make for toddlers!

Do a Little Dance! Best for pre-schoolers and the bold! Choreograph a simple dance routine to a fun song (try out Frances England’s Fast Train to Grandma’s) and perform it for the grandparents on Christmas. Video tape it if you’re not spending the holiday with them and send it in the mail. I assure you it will be played over and over for everyone and anyone who will watch it with them!

Flower Vase: Best for pre-schoolers and older. Clean out a glass jar and remove any labels (hot water is usually best). Cut pieces of colorful tissue paper and lightly glue the tissue paper onto the glass jar. Let dry and fill with tissue paper flowers (http://crafts.kaboose.com/flower2.html ) or real flowers.

A Novel Idea: Have your toddler or pre-schooler dictate a story to you for the grandparents (it may be a few tries before you get a winner). Write it down on different pages, have your child draw pictures on each page, and bind up in a book with yarn or binder rings.

How do we expose our children to the great master artists? After visiting a museum, is there a way to bring those incredible visual experiences back home?

My father-in-law played this game with his youngest daughter, and I thought it was a brilliant way to familiarize young children with masterpieces of art. Whenever visiting a museum, he would purchase two postcards of each piece of art he enjoyed. He would then use these postcards to play "Go Fish" with his daughter. They would shuffle the postcards and each take five and leave the rest in a pile to draw upon when they needed to refill their hands. He would ask her, "Do you have Monet's Water Lilies?" and she would respond accordingly. If she didn't recognize the name, he would simplify the phrasing: "Do you have a picture of a lake with flowers floating on it?" If she did, she would hand it to him and he would respond, "Great! Claude Monet's Water Lilies!" By repeating the name of the artist and the piece of art, he was exposing her to the various names and helping her remember these incredible masterpieces.

Another great game to play with postcards is "Memory". Be sure to repeat the artist and their work of art as you flip the postcards over. "Here is Van Gogh's The Reaper... I think I remember seeing this same man reaping hay over here!"

Games with art postcards have the potential to expand a young child's appreciation of art. Imagine seeing the real piece of art after only seeing the postcard!