Our Advent Calendar.

We've always made some sort of advent calender but for the last few years we've made an activity one. Instead of just making a Christmas to count down the days, we've made one and then behind each door we had a Christmas craft / activity to do for that day. In the run up to advent I would talk to the children about different crafts etc that they would like to do, making paper chains is always on the list and I would add some crafts and Christmas stories as well. This year we we were going to do the same but having seen lots of lovely pictures of toilet roll Christmas trees, I thought we would use that as our base. So unfortunately me trying to save enough rolls didn't work, my husband is rather to efficient on the recycling front, so I had to cut mine in half to have enough. Then the children set about painting the 24 rolls, 3 brown for the trunk and the rest green. When they were dry, I spent some time gluing them all together.

 We then added a star and a couple of presents and of course some glitter

in each roll I made a little scroll tied with red string, inside the scroll I've written the days craft / activity.

Our planned activities this year are :-
                                                   1 - Paper star decorations
                                                   2 - Make salt dough decorations
                                                   3 - Snowman scrape art
                                                   4 - Fir cone Christmas trees
                                                   5 - St Nicholas story
                                                   6 - Make paper chains
                                                   7 - Make bath bombs
                                                   8 - Make candles
                                                   9 - Melted snowman biscuits
                                                   10 - Oasis block painting wrapping paper
                                                   11 - Gingerbread house
                                                   12 - More paper decorations
                                                   13 - Make Christmas cards
                                                   14 - Mini chocolate Christmas puddings
                                                   15 - Watch a Christmas film
                                                   16 - Decorate porcelain Christmas trees
                                                   17 - Snowman pictures
                                                   18 - Decopatch reindeer
                                                   19 - Paper doves
                                                   20 - Paint paper mache stars etc
                                                   21 - Learn a Christmas Carol
                                                   22 - Read the Christmas Story
                                                   23 - Make tissue paper wreaths
                                                   24 - read the Night Before Christmas
but sshh don't tell the children I've written out the list here as it is supposed to be a surprise.

Scones

Today I thought I would try my scone recipe but make it with dairy / soya free spread and oat milk and they turned out to be very yummy indeed we will have to make more. As you can tell from the picture the children did most of the rolling and cutting out, which made for some variety in shape and size but still tasted good.

So we have another yummy recipe for snack time, sometimes we serve with home made jam, other times marmite or seed butters, or just buttered and served with some fresh fruit. We also sometimes make them with half wholemeal and half white flour and add 15ml of ground flax seeds to make them extra nutritious. Lovely served warm or cold.

                                         200g plain flour
                                         15ml baking powder
                                         50g butter / dairy free spread
                                         10ml sugar
                                         140ml milk / oat milk

1-Sift flour and baking powder together.
2-Rub in butter / dairy free spread.
3-Stir in sugar.
4-Stir in milk to make a soft dough, do this gradually as you might not need all the milk.
5-knead out onto a floured surface.
6-Roll out to about 1.5cm thick (1/2inch) and cut out scones.
7-Cook at Gas 8 for about 10 to 15 minutes.