The Reindeer Express

This month’s Christmas themed activities are inspired by the magical picture book ‘The Last Stop on the Reindeer Express’ written by Maudi Powell-Tuck. These activities are designed to bring the story to life and the magic of Christmas.

Christmas tree

This is a lovely activity to do on a bright Sunday day. We headed to local woods to find a stick which was lots of fun and gave us the perfect excuse to get outside. In the afternoon, with the fire roaring, we made our Christmas Tree. This was a wonderful activity to learn how to tie knots. Our Christmas Tree was used in the Reindeer Express Small World and then will go on the Christmas Tree.

Reindeer Express small world

This is an activity we have repeated a few times. Each time with slightly different natural treasures that we have found on our walks. It’s a been a great activity to reinforce all those amazing vocabularly that the author of The Last Stop on the Reindeer Express uses.

Christmas biscuits

My son loved this activity and enjoyed it even more when we ate them with a hot chocolate and read the book together. Baking together is such a great activity and is teaches so many skills. Plus the house was filled with the heavenly smells of Christmas.

Of course, once they were cool enough to eat, we settled in with a hot drink, our Christmas biscuits and The Last Stop on the Reindeer Express.

Reindeer card

Making cards is always a hit with my two children and this activity was no different! I had a slightly damp flannel on standby to wipe messy fingers off on. This is especially helpful with youngest as she often does not like the sensation of having “messy” hands so having the flannel nearby gave her the security that she could wipe her hands at any time. We actually had a bit of a practice go on some scrap white paper first to test how much paint we needed and which finger/part of our finger worked best. Once we had practiced it was time to print onto our cards. One tip would be to leave the cards flat whilst they are drying as the paint can run down otherwise and leave a drip mark. Once dry we added the details using pens.

How to build a snowman

F had been keen to build snowmen with the white playdough since she had first gotten the tin so I decided to set this up with her. We used the white playdough from our Christmas activity box and some twigs and very small pebbles from outside. For the hat and scarf I found some mismatched socks that no longer fitted my girls and cut them up. The toe end became hats for our reindeers and I cut across the width of the sock to create scarves. F was so in love with her snowmen that she couldn’t bare to have them taken apart so they went to love on our windowsill instead!

Snowball splat

Lovely simple Maths game which uses the white playdough from this box and the wooden dice from The Boy and the Bear box. This game can be played with two or more players and is a great game to practice counting and subtraction.

We started by teaching rolling a set number of snow balls and the aim was to roll the dice and then splat the corresponding number of snow balls. Whoever splatted all their snowballs first was the winner.

woodland floor

This used the Schleich Reindeer from the box and together with some lentils and dried spices from my kitchen cupboard, my son and I created this woodland floor sensory bin.

Fingerprint Christmas Cards

These are incredibly simple Christmas card crafts that are easy enough to try with pre-schoolers and older kids at home too. Using the brown finger paint from our Christmas activity box for the birds card we printed a series of finer prints across a landscape piece of white card. The reindeers pulling the sleigh was a little trickier and we did a practice run on a piece of paper to work out which way round our fingers needed to go for the body and then the head joining on to it. Once we had completed the finger painting it was time to let them dry. Then once dry we added the details. We used a colouring pencil, a felt tip pen and a black writing pen to add the details. I was impressed how well the green colouring pencil showed up on top of the reindeers body!