Nursery Christmas Card

We have our Christmas Lesson

today in  the church Nursery.

For our little ones,

it focuses on Jesus being 

the Son of Heavenly Father. 

To simplify the idea, the picture we use is of Mary and the baby only. We can introduce Joseph as step-daddy later. I love this picture, the way it portrays the bond between Mary and her Heavenly child.

It can be found in the manual "Behold Your Little Ones" at LDS.org.  If you are interested in finding out about our beliefs, another good site is mormon.org.

We are letting the children decorate a Christmas card with foam shapes. We will slip the picture in and they can take it home. 

We did some at Thanksgiving with Christi's family, and the little ones loved it. 

The hands of a two year old. I didn't know how he would do with the markers, but he did great.

 Ginger Giraffe was quite interested.

 Even Mommy got into the act. 

Here are the finished cards. 

MERRY CHRISTMAS 

From Our House to Yours

Giant Beads at a Tiny Price

I made these giant beads for our church nursery out of foam swim noodles, smooth rope, and flexible plastic lids. (I used cottage cheese lids, the thick, pliable kind.) You cut the 'noodles' into about 1-inch slices to make the beads. Cut the rope into 2-foot long pieces. We used a nylon coated rope, so my 21-year-old firebug (former Boy Scout) melted and shaped the ends for me to make a nice smooth end for stringing the beads.

Anthony drilled a hole in each lid, a little smaller than the rope. After I pushed the rope into the hole, my son melted the ends and splayed them so the lid stays on at the bottom of the rope.

The kids absolutely love this toy. My thanks to my friend Deniece, a former preschool teacher, for the idea. Thanks, also, to the parents for giving me permission to use the pictures on my blog.