Oso pardo, Oso pardo Que Ves Ahi?

I'm super excited with how nice my stick figure puppets came out for the book Oso Pardo, Osos Pardo Que ves ahi?

Last year this book was used in the Spanish class that I volunteered in and I feel in love with the book. I want to kids to get a good hands on experience with the book so that they will really cement the animal names and colors into their memory.

My set has been laminated to add to it's durability  The kids set won't be laminated, but are on card stock so they should last through a lot of play.

I traced the animals from the back page of the book. I needed to make a few changes because even tracing them mine didn't turn out looking as good as the book. I then cut them out, colored then, laminated them with my Purple Cow laminator I got from Costco a few months back and finally taped them onto the large popcicle sticks.

We've already learned out colors, so the new words this lesson will be the animal names. I'm excited to bring my bag of animals to help us learn their names and to have the kids say the animal color and name. We'll use my animal puppets during the lesson until they make their own.

I really like having the kids bring home something to show their families what they are learning, and then for them to turn around and teach their families.

Our Nativity

Years ago my parents gave our family us this Nativity set. We used it for a few years on it's own, but it needed a stable for all the pieces to go into.

Then I found this stable at a thrift store for $2 and it was PERFECT for our Nativity set. 

We've been using this Nativity set and stable together for nearly 10 years. For a long time I had the set on display on our piano and would bring it down for the kids to play with when I was with them.

I was scared of them braking the pieces.

After reading a story about a mom just like me and her special Nativity set and a sweet interaction with a small child playing with baby Jesus, I changed my mind. 

I decided that if a piece got broken it would show that it was adored, played with, loved and teaching our children about the baby Jesus, the real meaning of Christmas. 

Since then we keep the stable and Nativity pieces on a low table for the kids to play with. Each of the kids like to set it up in a different way. Corrine added 2 brown horses that she painted last year. They fit perfectly in with the other animals and the more there are to adore baby Jesus, the better.

As the kids have grown older, they have learned to be more gentle with it. It wasn't always an easy thing hearing the pieces getting set down hard, or dropped or hit together. A gentle reminder of who they were playing with, seemed to remind them to treat the pieces with more reverence and kindness. 

Every year when we get out our Christmas decorations, these are some of the very first to get set up. This year Corrine and Rebecca set it up. Rebecca was sitting near Corrine and as she got each piece out of it's individual bubble wrap bag she would exclaim who she was holding, and they would both smile and look at it closely before getting the next piece out. 

I am so grateful for the sweet baby Jesus coming into the world to show us the way we should live to return to our Heavenly Father. I am so incredibly grateful to be able to teach our children about the baby Jesus and how Christ is the reason for Christmas.