A 10 meter tall Lego Christmas tree (thought to be the biggest of its kind) has been unveiled in London St.Pancras station.

Photo courtesy of Squirmelia


It is made with over 600,000 bricks - and has 172 branches. Now course, I don't really expect you to try making a tree this big! But I have found you a some great Christmas lego instructions.

There is a long list of different Christmas items here - click on the 'yes' in the instructions column to get details of each model.

This site has some nice Christmas ornaments, including a nice mini tree. If you click on the ornament you like, then click 'instruction guide' at the top of the page, you will get printable instructions.

Hopefully that will keep everyone quiet for a while!

Do you enjoy the decorations in shop windows over the Christmas season? Well, it looks like we have entered a whole new era!

Saks Fifth Avenue in New York delivered a modern twist on window displays with this transformation of their building front using computer mapping to create an animated 3D projection.




Enjoy!

Sorry! More Lego. But I couldn't resist this Lego animation.

I hope this inspires you to make your own animation for Christmas!

When my children were smaller we made decorative Christmas plates using their handprints for a couple of years in a row.



I have written about how to fire pottery in an oven to make this type of plate - and lots of other lovely painted ceramic items.

Even if you don't want to make ceramic plates, these would look good on paper plates - or use the design for your handmade Christmas cards.

Last year I had lots of visitors for Christmas, so I spent a little time making up a Christmas photo album showing all our Christmas's since my husband and I were married.

The visitors enjoyed looking through it - and I loved seeing how the children grew from page to page. I wish I had done this earlier - it is nicer for the Christmas photos to have their own album and be seen altogether. And I have plenty of blank pages left for Christmas to come!

Why not try this yourself and leave it out for the children to browse?

Sue sent me this wonderful picture of a Christmas Advent Spiral created by members of the Suffolk HomeSchooling Group in Tostock.


Now, I had never heard of a Christmas advent spiral - but I love this idea! Linked to Waldorf education, there is a great description of how to do this on this site. It would be a lovely thing to do as a homeschooling group - or just quietly at home (outside maybe!) with members of your family.

Thanks to Sue for sharing. I think this would make a wonderful new Christmas tradition for us.

I found a really nice online advent calendar to share with you this year.

Christmas around the Corner is a Finnish calendar that is full of Finnish recipes and craft ideas. I thought some of the crafts were very nice and worth a look.

I hope you enjoy it.

This is a neat painting tool that lets you apply glitter and sparkles to your photos.

Glitterboo lets you upload a photo, then apply clever effects to it. You can then download a new photo - or a small animation like the (rather blurry!) photo of our Christmas tree.

It is not a very intuitive site so do play around with it a bit yourself before showing the children. There are detailed instructions at the bottom of the screen to help you out.

A neat way to 'decorate' your Christmas photos.

I keep promising myself that one year I will decorate the dolls house for Christmas! Complete with tiny lights and a Christmas tree.

Until then though, I will have to content myself with this dolls house decorating game.

Have fun!

• SnowDrift - help the Yeti past the obstacles to his cave!

• Happy Holidays is really irritating game that the kids liked! Help Santa fly his sleigh and the elf throw the presents down the chimney.

• Snow Line. Nice physics type game. Draw a line for Santa that leads through the presents to his destination.

• Thin Ice. Skate in circles around the monsters to drop them into the freezing lake.

• Avalanche. See if you can out ski the avalanche - but watch out for rocks and trees.

The Three Rs!

Resources, Read-Alouds, and Recommendations

One of the planners I have used in the past is the Motivated Moms chore planner.

The downloadable planner consists of daily chore lists, combined with a daily planner, and comes in several formats. Those of you who know me, will know that I use Friday as a Tidy-Up Day and leave the bulk of my chores until then. Last year I used the planner but saved most of the chores to do on that one day. I found the planner good for reminding me to do those one-off tasks that usually get forgotten about!

Check out the sample planners and see what you think. If you decide to buy, then buying through my link above gives me a small commission.

Excited children and a whole day to fill are not a good mixture!

But for a few years now I have bought a new boardgame that I bring out on Christmas Eve. I picked interesting games (like Carcassonne and Agricola) that would take us a while to learn and keep us interested for the whole day.

I have loved Christmas eve since I started this tradition. It has become a lovely family day that goes quickly (without everyone feeling like they are 'just waiting' for Christmas!).

This year I decided we needed a change, so I have bought a nice Christmas jigsaw puzzle for us to complete on the day instead.

I think this will keep everyone interested and busy, and am looking forward to us all working together to complete it.

Why not start a new tradition of your own?

PS... If you are looking for ideas for presents, I have a nice list of activity books here.