Ady bought the advent calendars for the children this year. I’ve not said anything but I don’t really like his choice although I do understand why he got them. When we were children we shared an advent clalendar, it always had some sort of festive scene on it, sometimes it was a nativity, sometimes it would be something like Santa’s workshop. I don’t even know if they made chocolate calendars 20 odd years ago but we never had one and they always, but always stopped at 24 and it was always, but always a double door for 24.
I know in recent years we struggled to find anything similar in the shops and this year Ady came home in about October with two identical Disney Pixar chocolate advent calendars. They feature Nemo, Monsters Inc, Buzz Lightyear and Mr Incredible, there is not so much as a holly leaf or a santa hat to be seen. They contain a chocolate behind every door and not only do they not stop at 24, they go right past even 25 and take you all the way to the new year.
I don’t do religion but even I feel slightly spiritual at this time of year, I think there are lots of tender messages about humankind and peace and goodwill and stuff to be cherished and last year we did lots of chatting about baby Jesus, read a couple of stories based on it and generally tried to infuse the whole time of year with more than what Clinton Cards and Toys R Us have to offer.
So far from today’s first door opening being the exciting countdown that I recall December 1st being in my childhood with the chance to talk about what Christmas means as well as the enormous educational opportunities of days, weeks, months, counting down, looking for numbers etc it was a scuffle to wrench the door situated on Mr Incredibles unfeasibly large bicep and wolf down the chocolate as quickly as possible before getting all stroppy that they couldn’t open another one straight away. And of course the instant my back was turned, that was exactly what Scarlett did. 🙁 Luckily DC Davies was on the case and came reporting to me, so her’s was put on a high shelf, has now been set up high on the door to be brought down once daily and when she reaches the 8th she will be reminded again that the excesses of the first mean regret at a later date.
For once my Mum has unwittingly saved the day by bringing round a fantastic Christmas Carol book advent calendar which has a tiny book for each of the 24 days, which is set beautifully into a scene and is read on the relevant day then hung onto the Christmas tree with a loop until the whole of the Christmas Carol tale is told, then put away again for next year. Will really look forward to reading them both today’s and tomorrow’s in the morning as they munch on the chocolate tucked behind Sully’s right ear from their other calendars!
We went to soft play today where Julie and I had a nice catch up and moments of total hysteria over a builder who was there constructing some sort of grotto affair for their Christmas party in a couple of weeks time. He started off wearing these dungaree style overalls with a checked shirt and a banadana, and then suddenly he reappeared having removed the shirt! I was laughing like a drain at his blatant lack of sex appeal and thought Julie was too until she confessed she was actually quite enjoying it! He then spoilt it for her too and reduced me almost to tears of laughter by putting Madness ‘Our House’ on the duke box and sort of strutting around with his power tools to it! Classic!
It was a too expensive to be worth it day out though really. 🙁 It’s £8 to get in and then we spent another £7 on lunch and several cups of tea for me. It did mean the kids didn’t need proper tea at home having had a cooked lunch but neither of them were up to much still being quite skulky and needy of regular cuddles in their recovering from illness states so they certainly didn’t get 15 quids worth of value from the couple of hours we were there.
Came home and the children, having argued all the way home about the music (James Blunt again!) with each other decided they simply had to play castles together and dashed off upstairs. It was shortlived peace however and within about half an hour Tarly was downstairs to report on Davies for some misdemeanour and then he followed to defend himself and then we ended up doing a long winded chat about the weather.
I was going to get Davies to dictate what he’d learnt but he ran out of enthusiasm for further structure, so here is pretty much what he repeated back to me at the time, some of which has hopefully gone in permanently. We learnt that the weather is controlled by the sun, the earth is surrounded by an atmosphere and the bottom part closest to the earth (6-10 miles above) is called the troposhere and that’s where the weather happens. Above that is the stratosphere (which is also the name of a hotel in Las Vegas with a very mental rollercoaster ride which Uncle Frazer went on!). The sun warms the earth. Closer to the equator is closer to the sun so it is hotter – deserts etc, farther away from the equator is farther away from the sun, north and south pole etc. As the world orbits the sun we get nearer and further from it at different times of the year, when we are closest it is summer, when we are furthest it is winter. When it is winter here is is summer on the other side of the world. As it is winter here now it will be summer in Australia.
The sun warms the land and the sea but the land warms up faster which creates different temperatures in different places, the warms air moves to mix with the colder air and this creates wind. It also creates fronts and different pressures but we only very briefly touched on that.
We then tested this theory by holding a piece of cellophane above the radiator and watched it move in the wind created by the hot air trying to move into the room to mix with the cooler air, we looked out of the window at the howling wind bashing the washing line against the window to see how this worked on a bigger scale.
Next we talked about clouds and water. Davies gave me examples of liquid (the sea), solid (ice) and vapour (steam from a kettle) water. We talked about how steam is tiny droplets of water being carried on hot air moving about. We had previously talked about the water cycle so we just reminded ourselves of that.
We then stepped outside to ‘make’ some clouds by breathing out to make ‘dragon’s breath’ and talked about how that was water vapour.
I looked at a couple of books and websites to find some further experiements which we might well do another time.
Davies drew some pictures to show some different weather (a snowman, a tree being blown about by the wind complete with swirls to represent the wind, the same tree in the summer with fruit and blooms on it and some dark clouds with rain pouring out).
Then he got bored and asked if we could all make a picture of underwater together. We all got two sheets of blue paper taped together and drew some underwater stuff. Davies did a shark, a whale, an octopus, various small fishes and some coral, Tarly did a shark chasing a smaller fish to eat him all up and I did an octopus, a clownfish, a shark, a whale, a starfish, a jellyfish and a mermaid. Then we taped them all together to make one long underwater scene.
Then they had some soup for tea and Ady and my mum arrived home at the same time. Mum bearing the advent calendar gift and wanting to watch the dvd of Davies and me on TV as she’d not seen it yet. Mum and I then popped to Tescos as I needed a few bits not available in Lidl, she offered to buy the Willy Wonka dvd for the children to save us buying it ( 🙂 ) and we needed to get a few bits for Sunday as Chris and Julie and Granny are all coming to Mum & Dad’s house for an ‘official birthday’ for Tarly as we’re away next week and won’t see them all on the actual day.
Tarly has a really bad, barking cough and is lying in bed, half asleep making scary gasping and spluttering noises, Davies is hideously tired and grumpy but still wasn’t asleep before about 9pm. Tomorrow we are home for the day, I want to do some baking (mince pies, birthday cake etc) and I think we’ll aim for a nice low key day.
When I was little we had an advent calendar exactly as you described. In fact we had the same on every year, the doors were just pushed shut again. It was very much part of our Christmas, each year we would alternate who started in order that we alternated who got the 24th. My mum’s probably still got in the loft, I should ask.
Another tradition was the youngest (me) always got to turn the christmas tree lights on first. It was only recently that I found out that they often sneaked Julia in beforehand to have a go 🙁
Comment by Chris — 01 December 2005 @ 11:27 pm
Abbie and Joe have already eaten *all* the chocolates out of their calendars. I can’t be bothered to police it, I knew they were going to do it, so I just let them get on with it, it’s over now, tough luck for them! Joe did get into trouble when he started on Anna’s though 😉
Comment by Sarah — 02 December 2005 @ 7:30 am
I always used to be gracious and let Frazer open the first door safe in the knowledge that he hadn’t worked out that meant I would get to open 24. That worked for many a year before he clicked 😉
Chris, that’s crap about the Christmas lights 🙁
Comment by Nic — 02 December 2005 @ 8:08 am
sounds like a great idea. i totally agree about calenders. mum wnet out with SB to get one, and was profusely apologetic to me as she had chosen a barbie one with no christmas theme going on till new year. mum had tried to talk her out initially, and then wondered why she was and bought it. i understood though.
my MIL bought a sticker one, wich is a nativity, and every day, you get to add a sticker of a person/thing to the manger scene where the number is – you can see who you will add from the sticker sheet, but is a great talking device.
your mums one sounds absolutely bril.
rofl at builder
Comment by HelenJ — 02 December 2005 @ 10:26 am
Oooh you got to play Teach with Davies! Sounds great too. Shame soft play works out that expensive – would you be able to do it once a month?
Advent calendars – aarrrrggghhh, don’t get me started. We haven’t got one yet, will get one tomorrow and F can open 3 doors at once, but will definitely be looking for a non-chocolatey, Xmassy one, but sounds like we may not have much luck! However, Freya also has an advent box from J’s mum, with little gifts inside. This was J’s mum’s own idea, started last year, not sure how I feel about it on some levels, but there are certainly nice things about it.
Comment by Ali — 02 December 2005 @ 10:37 am
My advent calendar was like the one you described. I loved it, and their were these tiny little christmas/winter scenes behind each door, with a double door to the nativity on day 24. I hate those choc ones, for all sorts of reasons I can’t articulate, and when Hannah was about three or four we bought a cloth one, like a wall hanging.
Comment by Joyce — 02 December 2005 @ 10:41 am
I remember those calendars well too, each with a little picture behind. (For some reason the robin sticks in my mind.) But our kids have a cloth one too now, and get to take a little stuffed cloth ornament(?) out of Santa’s sack day to pop in a numbered pocket. I would have preferred a nativity scene, but they didn’t have any when we got ours, which is on it’s third year now. Was expensive, but it doesn’t seem so wasteful, and of course we only have the one, not three!
Comment by Barbara — 02 December 2005 @ 10:57 am
Our advent calender was exactly the same too and we had it for years.I completely loath the ones in the shops now so we don’t do them. It’s just wrong that they go up to New Year and wrong that they aren’t Xmas themed. We have a fabric pockets one that we’ve had since Fran and Maddy were 3 and 1. It normally has a sweet each per day, filled by “magic” but this year it’s going to have some nice trinkets in for a few of the days.
I’ve been meaning for years to have markers like Barbara has, might get them to make some today.
Comment by Merry — 02 December 2005 @ 11:18 am
Emma has one like D and S’s too but I had already bought her a lego one from lego on-line. So far dissapointing because the first day she had a fireman with two axes – ok – today can’t work out what it is but something to do with firemen with two pieces missing! Last year she had a winter polly pocket one which she loved and I had bought it after Christmas the year before for a quarter of the price. I like the cloth calendar one you can get now but it’s justifying the £30 to buy it. She had three chocolates out of the madagascar calendar yesterday but only 1 today! Nic where did your mum get the story one from? I love the sound of that one – may get one for next year.
Comment by karen b — 02 December 2005 @ 12:08 pm
Karen – we have the Lego one and what the bits are supposed to be are on the door so today was a fire hydrant, a hose with a water jet and his air tank for his back. HTH!
DS3 has a playmobil one and every day he gets something to make up a christmassy scene, so far he has a table!! and a garland with 4 candles. Hes not impressed LOL! Last year we had the fabric ones out but I was too unorganised to put anything non chocolate in, the milk free chocolate went pretty horrid by the end and I was forever saying they couldn’t have the damn things anyway because they were either in the middle of breakfast or just got dressed. I, OTOH, have a Mars one, didn’t even think that there might be some offering chocolate up til New Year, how odd!
Comment by SallyM — 02 December 2005 @ 12:29 pm
My Mum buys the advent calendars here and I’m pleased to report that she’s very well trained and buys non-chocolate ones with a festive theme that count down to Christmas (never heard of the new year ones…do you think they’ll start bringing the start date back until eventually a generation of kids will have advent calendars that start on Jan 1st and countdown to the new year? :-/ )
Surprisingly Lidl sell some quite nice cloth ones (£3 I think) but I’m a die-hard cardboard with 24 doors hiding little pictures person 😉
Comment by Heather — 02 December 2005 @ 1:28 pm
With ours the pockets each have a little cloth thingg with velro on it. So you take it out of the pocket each day, and stick it onto a velcro patch on the scene at the top, and over the month it builds up to a nativity. A musical star (silent night!), is day 23, and then the baby for the last day.
Comment by Joyce — 02 December 2005 @ 1:39 pm
Ach – Joyce you have the one I wanted, then. (Or at least sounds similar). With ours I can’t decide which way the cloth thngies should go – should I be emptying the pockets and filling up Santa’s sack in preparation for Christmas, or ‘delivering’ the ‘presents’ and filling up the pockets? We fill up the pockets during the month. Oh, the trials of life…
Comment by Barbara — 02 December 2005 @ 3:01 pm
Yes, i’ve mooned over that one a few times but ours is set for life now i think. Though getting 4 sweeties in it is tricky.
i did laugh the other day when one of my muslim friends said she was going to do an advent calender for eid 😀
Comment by Merry — 02 December 2005 @ 3:33 pm