Christmas Decorations 2022 Part 2
Santa Advent Calendar
A Read-Along Activity
The teddy bears are very busy making all their decorations for Christmas. This week they decided that they would like to make an Advent Calendar as they will be needing one on the 1st of December! They made their own Advent Calendars last year (you can read all about that again by clicking here) and this time they thought they would try something new.
Lizzie said that she had an idea that she thought the other bears might like to try out. She ran round collecting all the materials she would need so that she could show them what to do. She gathered some sheets of white A4 card, some marker pens in various colours, some glue, some pencils, some coins and some cotton wool balls.
First of all, they had to choose what design they wanted her to draw on the card as the background. They could choose from Santa's head, a snowman or Santa's hat. This was too much choice for all the other bears as they couldn't all decide on the same one.
"I think Santa's head would be nice," said Charlie.
"But I like snowmen," said Henry.
"And Santa's hat might be easier to draw," suggested Teddy.
So Lizzie said that she would draw Santa's head, and then everyone could make more Advent Calendars using different designs as their backgrounds. So the other bears settled down to watch how to make Lizzie's Advent Calendar.
First of all, she outlined Santa's head, wearing his usual hat, with a black marker. She was very good at drawing so it didn't take her very long. Then she coloured in his hat in bright red, and made his face all pink and rosy, as if he had just come down the chimney! She left the fur on his hat, its bobble, and his moustache and his very long beard, white.
Then she placed one of the coins at the top of his beard and very carefully drew round it. Tommy helped by standing on the coin so it wouldn't move while she drew round it. Then she moved it to the right and drew round it again until there was a row of circles along the top of his beard. Then she moved the coin down underneath the circles she'd already drawn, and drew another row of them. Eventually Santa's beard was covered in circles. The other bears couldn't understand what she was up to! Was Santa going to end up with holes in his beard?
"Does somebody want to count the number of circles?" asked Lizzie. "I will!" offered Vicky and she did just that!
"24!" she announced. "What does 24 mean on an Advent Calendar?" asked Lizzie. "It's the number of days in December until Christmas!" shouted Tommy.
"Correct," smiled Lizzie. Then she numbered the circles from 1 to 24 very neatly in order. "So now we have to think of something which we could cover each of those circles with to mark the passing of each day" she continued. "That's what the cotton wool balls are for," she said. "We can glue a ball every day on top of its matching numbered circle, and by the time Christmas arrives, Santa's beard will be completely covered and look like a real fluffy beard!"
"Let's see what Santa would look like as his beard grows," she said as she started gluing cotton wool balls to her outline. "We can draw another Santa to use as the Advent Calendar" she explained, "but I just wanted to show you how it will look after just a few days."
She glued cotton wool balls onto Santa's beard and even with just a few circles covered, Santa's beard was beginning to look very real.
"That's brilliant!" the other bears exclaimed. "Can we have a go now please?" they asked. Lizzie handed out the card and pens and the bears got into groups to make their Advent Calendars.
"Can you show us how to draw a snowman please, Lizzie?" asked Henry. So Lizzie explained that all they needed to draw were 2 circles, one slightly smaller than the other, to use as the head and the body of the snowman. Then they could draw a face on him using the black marker, and put some buttons down the front of his body.
Lizzie was very pleased with their efforts and told them that she thought putting the circles in a random order would make each day more exciting.
Whilst Lizzie had been helping Henry's group make the snowman, and drew the outline of Santa's head again for another group (leaving them to add the detail), Teddy's group had drawn an outline of a big Santa's hat on their card, following the shape of the one on Lizzie's Santa. Part of the hat they coloured red, but left the rest white. "We're going to number our circles haphazardly too!" Teddy told Lizzie. "And the circle for Number 24 is already there - it's the bobble on the end!" he laughed.
The bears all had a great time making their Advent Calendars. They will have to keep a bottle of glue and a supply of cotton wool balls next to their Calendars so they can quickly add a ball each day.
