It’s that time again for us here in the southern hemisphere. Not only Christmas but also our long Summer break. It only seems like two minutes ago that we were wishing you all a joyous 2010 Christmas and a safe and happy New Year for 2011.

This past year has seen many changes for the two of us beginning with our venture away from teaching in the classroom to running workshops and attending conferences and inservice days, which have taken us on some very enjoyable road trip adventures all around the country and given us the opportunity to meet up with some wonderful blogging friends and followers!!

While this year has been transitional it has also been a very busy and extremely rewarding one for both of us and we would like to express our sincere thanks to all of you who have supported us – it really is what inspires us to inspire you!

We are going to take a small break over the Christmas and New Year period and pump up the energy for a fabulous 2012. We are planning to be back online at the end of January but in the meantime we invite you to take a stroll down memory lane with us to revisit some of our ’oldies but goodies‘ posts which, if you have not been with irresistible ideas from the very start – September 2009 - you may not have seen before.

You can always keep in touch with us via our twitter page and of course we won’t be too far away from our irresistible ideas Facebook page where we’ll be posting links to some great resources as well as checking out what all of our other blogging friends are up to over the holiday period!

So from both of us here, eat, drink (in moderation) and be merry while chilling out with friends and loved ones. If you’re in the Southern Hemisphere with us try and keep a cool head this summer. For our Northern Hemisphere neighbours, be sure to rug up against the cold! Wherever you are stay safe and happy and we hope you enjoy a wonderful Christmas and holiday period with a very happy New Year to look forward to in 2012!

However you choose to celebrate this holiday season …

 we send you our very best wishes – Sherry and Donna

On Thursday night Donna was invited along to the Jells Park Kindergarten end of year concert.

The concert was held in the school hall next door to the kindergarten, and as Lauren has 50 children in her kindergarten group, who attend on a rotational basis, it was a good thing they had so much space because they were expecting quite a crowd – a true testament to Lauren’s passion and the respect her families give her as their much loved teacher.

Each child had the opportunity to perform in 6 small group action songs before coming together for a few Christmas songs at the end.

The children had an absolute ball and while they have rehearsed all term for this night, clearly it has been a big highlight for them as they were all extremely excited to be ‘going on stage’ to perform in front of their families and friends.

The items they performed included Rock’n Robin … The Time Warp … Milkshake … Clap your hands … Shake your tail feather … Splish Splash … Thriller … Sunshine … The Birdie Dance … Who let the dogs out … Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer … Jingle Bells and We Wish you a Merry Christmas.

But Donna’s personal favourite was the terrific Australian Christmas song – Santa Wear Your Shorts! And while the children in this video are NOT the children from Jells Park it is a great example of Aussie children wishing for a warm, warm Christmas!

Here are the words to Santa Wear Your Shorts

We all love a warm warm Christmas

sitting outside on a summer night

We’re all wishing for a warm warm Christmas

Maybe Santa Claus would wear his shorts tonight

Santa Wear Your shorts

Santa Wear Your shorts

Santa Wear Your shorts tonight

Santa Wear Your shorts

Santa Wear Your shorts

Santa Wear Your shorts tonight

Brother keeps smiling, Sister does too

we put our Christmas turkey on the barbecue

Mum is happy cos’ warm weather’s cool

and Dad is happy cos’ he’s swimming in the pool

Santa Wear Your shorts

Santa Wear Your shorts

Santa Wear Your shorts tonight

Santa Wear Your shorts

Santa Wear Your shorts

Santa Wear Your shorts tonight

We all love a warm warm Christmas

sitting outside on a summer night

We’re all wishing for a warm warm Christmas

Maybe Santa Claus would wear his shorts tonight

Santa Wear Your shorts

Santa Wear Your shorts

Santa Wear Your shorts tonight

Santa Wear Your shorts

Santa Wear Your shorts

Santa Wear Your shorts tonight

Santa Wear Your shorts tonight

We have seen beautifully made cupcakes at various kinders over the year such as these at Syndal Preschool …

and these from Highvale Preschool.

When the children were out in the yard having fun in their mudpie cafe, we thought they might like to have a go at making some of their own simple ones to add to the fare.

We saw something similar on a blog a while ago, but can’t remember where, so many apologies if this is your idea! We got out patty pans, small and big pom poms and the glue gun.

Our children are pretty confident with the hot glue gun now so we were able to step back and let them go for it …

with us still keeping a careful eye on things.

They began by glueing big pom poms into the patty pans …

and adding a small one on top.

Of course just as we adults were thinking they resembled mini Christmas cupcakes …

they made the ‘cakes’ their own!

Then turned patty pan over and glued the ‘cake’ onto the bottom …

made cup cake sandwiches …

and even made cup cake ‘clam shells’!

After the children had made a few, they asked for the box of beads as they wanted to add to the decorations.

Sometimes the pom poms were totally discarded!

We loved the results of all their hard work …

 and so did they.

Where-oh-where has 2011 gone?

It’s incredible to think that Christmas is just about upon us, and our school year here in Australia is coming to an end.

While looking through the multitude of blogs we follow each day we have seen some really terrific Christmas ideas. For those of you who enjoy offering such activities to your children, you might like to check out the links we’ve listed below.

We’re warning you though … this is just a sniff of what is out there.

Be sure to follow the links from all these pages and you’ll be amazed at what else you might discover!

::: Early Play Australia - Christmas Craft Roundup

::: Nurture Store - 16 Christmas tree crafts to  try

::: Hands on: As We Grow - 30 Homemade Ornaments For the Kids

::: Creative Connections For Kids -  Christmas Playdough

::: Pre-K Pages – How To Make a Gingerbread Baby House

::: Frugal Fun For Boys – Easy Christmas Ornaments to Make

::: Delicious – Simple Holiday Ideas for Preschoolers!

::: Uncreate with Kids – Hand Print Christmas Tree

::: Play and Learn with Dana – Scrap Christmas Trees and Christmas Eye Spy Bottles

::: Learning and Teaching with Preschoolers – Just in Time for the Holidays

::: Childhood 101 – Homemade Christmas Fun: Christmas Snow Dome and even more inspiration here.

::: Red Ted Art – How to … Making Christmas crackers

::: Creative with kids – Creative Christmas Countdown

:::  Irresistible Ideas for Playbased Learning – And of course there are plenty of Christmas ideas of our own right here … Just scroll back through the ‘older entries’ tab!

It’s that time again for us here in the southern hemisphere. Not only Christmas but also our long Summer break. It only seems like two minutes ago that we were wishing you all a joyous Christmas and a safe and happy New Year.

2010 has been a very busy but extremely rewarding year for both of us and we would like to express our sincere thanks for all of your wonderful support – it’s what keeps us all going day after day, isn’t it?

We are going to take a small break over the Christmas and New Year period and pump up the energy for a fabulous 2011. We are planning to be back online in January but in the mean time we invite you to take a stroll down memory lane with us to revisit some of our  ’oldies but goodies‘ posts, which, if you have not been with irresistible ideas from the very start – September 2009,  you may not have seen before.  On our return we will be showing you some great ideas for what to do with children on holidays.

You can keep in touch via our  irresistible ideas Facebook page where we’ll be checking out what our blogging friends are up to over the holiday period!

So from both of us eat, drink and be merry, chill out and have a wonderful Christmas and a happy New Year!

Sherry and Donna

We decided to go easy on ourselves and our parents this year, and instead of asking them to send along a plate of food to share on our party day, we thought the children might like to cook their own. And, they did!

We set up five cooking stations. The first one was making Christmas biscuits – iced Marie biscuits with lollies to make holly.

The second was chocolate truffles.

The third was fairy bread …

and the fourth was what we call “Sparkly Wands” – thin bread sticks with melted chocolate spread on them then dipped in sprinkles.

Easy and delicious.

The children also decorated party hats …

and made place mats for the table.

Everyone was extremely busy but quiet and industrious.

We had an absolutely fabulous day, enjoyed by by all of us.

The parents didn’t have to do anything and the children had complete ownership of the food.

Our fifth cooking station was sausages in bread, so it wasn’t a total diet of sweet food!

YUM!

We kept the easels up a bit longer and changed the materials.

We added Christmas stamps, drawing implements, sequins and glue.

We love seeing what the children will come up with …

and as usual …

they didn’t let us down!

When we were getting out some Christmas decorations to jazz up kinder lately, we noticed that a couple of them, a Santa and a snowman, were in the shape of a star.

We thought the children could probably make their own Santas using the star shape as the basis.

We did actually run off stars on red paper as it is a pretty tricky shape for children to draw.

Nevertheless, they were very capable of cutting them out quite well.

Checking the decoration gave them an idea of where the various parts of Santa should go, so the head at the pointy top …

gloves on the sides…

boots on the bottom points …

and a belt around the middle.

Add some cottonwool as fluffy white hair and a beard …

and there you are – a star Santa!

Even though we are not advocates of offering the children shapes, pictures, whatever, already done for them, we did find that the children rose to the challenge of accurate cutting.

Fortunately their Santas all turned out different and individual – whew!!!

We popped out the small table top easels.

We added drawing paper, Christmas pom poms and glue, water colour paints, gold paper and old Christmas cards then left the children to it.

As soon as something Christmassy is added to the mix, that’s the direction the creations always tend to go in.

Most children seemed to think Christmas tree.

We like the children to paint and draw their own shapes, but sometimes parents on duty can’t help themselves and draw the outlines for the children.

Although we prefer the children’s own creations, we have to admit that they often seem to enjoy having that basic part done for them. Is it laziness or lack of confidence or experience? Heck, we don’t know!

With our singing lately of BINGO, JESUS and SANTA, we have found that the children are quite interested in how words are spelled and how many letters are in them. Of course if they have five letters in them we can sing them to the BINGO tune! What a lot of fun we have been having!

They have also been noticing that the word ‘Christmas’ is in the title of many of the stories we are reading at the moment, and having talked about how it is spelled we decided to put up a Christmas sign.

We wrote the outlines, including the year, onto strips of white canvas.

The children’s job was to decorate the letters with the Poscas they used …

on their Memory Books.

The one rule we gave them was that they had to draw within the lines.

We are finding that they are loving having a rule or two (although they are good at disregarding the ‘clean up after yourself’ rule!).

It was another group project which they enjoyed doing together then admiring the results of their work.

Their sign looks great and very welcoming hanging up at the end of our room.