Christmas Calendar

Last year we made a christmas calendar to mark E's achievements in artistry through out the year.  It was such a hit that I decided to do it again this year and make it a tradition.  It is a way to sort the good stuff from the pieces that

I get a calendar from the craft shop.  One that has space for pictures on all 12 months. 

Anything is possible to include, but I tend to make sure we have foot prints and hand prints so as the years go by we will see her grow.  Also one month has her name on it.  As she gets older i am sure that this one will change from simply being her name to being some poem or other written message that her handwriting can handle. 

The others are sticking/drawing/painting creations.  Last year we did

• January - white crayon design on white paper and painted over to highlight the drawing. 
• February - drawing of 'Papa and Darling'.  Her own crayon drawing
• March - hand prints
• April - flowers drawn on seperate paper, cut out and stuck on into spring design.  Kinda like a collage
• May - drawing
• June - painting
• July - feet prints
• August - name (join the dots)
• September - sticking of leaves - cut outs of paper in autumn colours into collage
• October - rubbings of bark/or whatever you can find, last year all bark was too wet, so we did corregated cardboard.  similar effect
• November - We did a collage with lots of shiny bits of paper
• December - christmas design, used stickers from cardmaking and glass painting designs and added them together to be christmassy

This year we are doing a chalk drawing on black paper for the november one, but most of the others will stay similar though i am hoping to be more creative int he making of it.  We have less art work to work with this year as she only did about 5 pieces of art in nursery over an 8 month stretch. But we have plenty of bits and pieces around the house that we can use to have some fun with.  Am thinking of doing some blowing through straws to splatter paint - just got to clench up my cleaning reserves for the potential mess afterwards.  However, lino floors were not invented for no reason!  And with plenty of paper and plastic down there should be minimal mess really if we manage to keep the straws pointing paper/floor direction! 

Any art work we do that is not included but is too good to throw away will be laminated and a little calendar added to the bottom of it (like offices use) and give to other special people.  Will have to make sure we get one liket hat for my brother as he is going into the army and not sure how often we will see him.  Also for the price of a new calendar each year the same picture can then be reused!  OK. maybe not, that will be his choice, but i am doing that with the one she made for me last year - the picture is so cheerful!

There are so many options of things to include that I hope that if you do it that you will enjoy it and have great memories from putting it together.  It is cheap and easy which is why i like it so much, and it is her special gift to my parents which adds good value.
Peace
EF.x