Hoglets' Christmas Magic by Lynette Creswell and Doriano Strologo and published by White Rabbit Books is a lovely story about two hoglets on a hunt for a new star for their Christmas tree. The book is beautifully written, has lovely detailed pictures and each page is a different colour. Even though the story has lots of words my two year old enjoyed listening to it and looking at the pictures. The book is perfect for a gift at Christmas or to read before as a family.
Activities
Star hunt
Night time star hunt
Decorate an outdoor tree
Christmas salt decorations (not edible)
Hedgehog platter
Star biscuits
Make a hedgehog
Decorate a tree
Decorate the Christmas tree
Lost doll hide and seek
Leaf play
Leaf categorisation
Outdoor
The story is mostly set outside as that is where the hoglets are looking for their star, so I thought that I would start with the outdoor activities first. A nice easy activity could be to do a star hunt. You could either get our child/children to hunt for one star or lots of stars and see who found the most. You can easily make a star or stars out of card. This could be yellow or gold card or you could colour some white card in. If you have a laminator then you could laminate the star/stars or if not you could do the sticky tape method where you just wrap the tape round until it is covered and this works just as well. I don't have a laminator so I get through quite a lot of sticky tape. Another activity could be a night time walk and you could look at the stars while you are out and about. This works best on a clear night as you can easily see the stars but could be fun on a cloudy night too as stars are harder to spot. Another fun activity could be to decorate a tree outside with some Christmassy ornaments. If you haven't got any spare then you could make some with your child/children and hang those on.
Food/Cooking
The first activity isn't edible so please don't eat your creations because they will taste horrible. You could make some salt decorations for your tree. There are recipes online but I use the Aldi one which is 120g of plain flour, 200g of salt and 1 cup of warm water. Mix the ingredients together, knead, roll out and then cut out using shape cutters. Add a hole so you are able to hang your creations and then put in the oven at 150 degrees for an hour or until they are dry. Your child/children can decorate them and hang them on the tree. For something you can eat you could create a hedgehog fruit and cheese platter. You need something fairly hedgehog shaped like a melon or pineapple and then put cocktail sticks in to make it look like spikes and add olives, grapes, cheese, baby tomatoes etc. onto the spikes. You could use a grape for the nose and eyes and your hedgehog will look good and also be healthy. You could make it as a surprise for your child/children or you could get them to help you make it. If you wanted something a bit sweeter or a bit less healthy you could put different jelly sweets on the spikes instead. For a sweet activity you could make some star biscuits (or buy some, there is no judging here) and decorate them with icing, different sweets and toppings.
Indoor
There are lots of different ways to make hedgehog spikes so you could cut out some hedgehogs for your child/children and then give them a range of materials and see what they choose to make the hedgehog spikes out of. Some of the things you could make available are twigs, leaves, lollypop sticks, pegs, straws etc. You could do something similar with a Christmas tree and give your child/children a Christmas tree shape and then they could decorate that. Of course you could decorate your actual Christmas tree if you haven't got it up yet. Your child/children could make the doll that gets lost and then you could play hide and seek with the doll and see who can find it first or if you have more than one child you could get them to take it in turns dressing up as the doll and then they can hide and the others need to find him/her. For a messy/tactile activity you could go and collect some leaves and then your child/children can play with them, look at the different shapes and colours and they could make a den perfect for a hedgehog (this activity could be done outside too). Older children could categorise the leaves and younger children could put them in piles of size and colour etc.
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