Candy Cane Party

It may not seem that worthy of an occasion to those living in the land of the ubiquitous holiday treat, but when a kind visitor from the States brings you candy canes here, you have a party!

My little kitchen helper decided to jump in on the prep for some treats.  He is, by the way, stirring an empty tea kettle, so don't worry!  My boys had cracked a couple of the candy canes, so I crushed up two of them and put them on top of oreos (which are surprisingly easy to find here) that I had dipped in white chocolate.  Ok, well, I had planned to dip them, but the chips seized (a new term I learned in the process), so I ended up sort of globbing it on top of the oreos instead.  They weren't pretty, but they still tasted good!

When our friends first arrived, I had the cards for this Merry Christmas Candy Cane ABC's from 1+1+1=1 spread out on the floor, and the kids were supposed to find the matching capital and lowercase letters with candy canes.  Isaiah usually loves matching games, but all the kids were so excited that none of them really ending up doing much with this.

My mom had bought us The Legend of the Candy Cane for our Kindle, so we read that together.  The video and audio links made the appearance of it a little wonky on the regular Kindle we have, but it is still a nice story.

Then, the kids found the candy cane cards I had "hidden" around the room from Confession of a Homeschooler's Christmas Preschool Pack..  One of Isaiah's favorite things to do is find "hidden" things as part of an activity, so I put the candy cane picture cards around in various places.

As the kids found them, they brought them over to the table and found the numbers that matched and glued them on the pictures.

We played one of Mama Jenn's Candy Cane Grid Game.  We just used regular number dice and had two going at the same time so there was less wait time between turns so that the little ones didn't totally lose interest.  We just covered the spaces with cotton balls.

We also used the candy cane poem and coloring page from Confession of a Homeschooler's Christmas Preschool Pack.  The kids colored their own copies.

Then we had two options for quick art projects, and the kids could choose either or both.  I had white and red pipe cleaners that they could twist together and bend into a candy cane.  While it was really simple for the older ones, they all seemed to really like it, and my boys carried it around with them all day, confusing quite a few local friends as to what on earth they were carrying around.  

The other project was to draw a candy cane shape on white paper and use thumbprints of red paint to make the stripes on the candy cane.  These didn't work out to be quite as cute as I had envisioned, but they were still a simple and fun project.

At the end, the boys all headed outside to play with our gingerbread cloud dough, which was a HUGE hit, not only at this party but over and over and over again with my boys and with friends that came over to play, as I mentioned in a previous post.

We had a really fun time, and it was fun to make a big deal out of what would be a small treat back "home."