Let It Snow! Winter Wonderland Tea Party

Ducky and Princess Teddy got seats of honor

So Hazel had her well doctor visit and I wanted to make the whole day special so she would have a positive memory instead of just getting shots. We started today having a Winter Wonderland Tea Party. First we had to do some crafts to decorate and then we had to get all the dolls and animals. Then Hazel had to feed them all and get dressed herself (in costume). Then we had some tea and read lots of snow themed stories. Below are the ones I let her choose from and we have read at least 12 of them in the past two days.

I promised at yesterday's Sharing Saturday (which is still open!), that I would feature some snow-themed crafts today. I knew we did this, so I knew it would be a perfect fit here. Plus we used some of the ideas for our crafts. Here are those features:

1) From Life with Moore Babies: Colored Snowballs and More Ice and Snow Fun
2) From Making Boys Men: Frost Writing (For those without snow around but cold weather!)
3) From Gift of Curiosity: Snowman Craft for Preschoolers (see ours below)
4) From ArtClubBlog: Paper Snowflakes Tutorial (see ours below)
5) From Little Wonders' Days: Glittered Peppermint Winter Play Dough

And here are a few from past Sharing Saturdays:

1) From Gift of Curiosity: Winter Printable Pack
2) From Organic Aspirations: Sensory Play with Snow Indoors
3) From Like Mama ~ Like Daughter: Winter Themed Week in Preschool

Also check out the features from past Sharing Saturdays here and here. Some of these would have been great snacks for our tea party!

3-D Snowflake

So we decorated for our big winter wonderland.  I made a simple 3-d snowflake using some foam snowflakes I bought. I was inspired by Paper Source and just cut a slit in each and fit them together. Then punched a hole in one and put a string through it to hang.

Paper Snowflakes = Placemats

We made some paper snowflakes using the tutorial from ArtClubBlog (see feature above). We decided to use them as placemats. I also tried to make some out of felt using the same tutorial but my scissors were not quite sharp enough to make it beautiful. I am going to make them into pillows.

Felt Snowflake

We made several snow angel chains. Hazel had a go at cutting some but cut their heads off, so she used her smiley face stickers for heads and then added smiley faces to all of them. For hers we used the template at First Palette. For the ones I did I drew my own template to make them look more like snow angels. Here is my template.

I folded one of her large pieces of construction paper in half the long way and then folded into eighths in accordion style and cut this out. This is how they came out pre-smiley face.

Source

I wish we had the book The Snow Angel by Glenn Beck, but the library did not have it in, so we will have to read it another time. We loved it last year.

Hazel also made a cotton ball snowman similar to the one shared by Gift of Curiosity (see feature above). We used a pipe cleaner for a carrot nose and stick arms.

Then we laid out some fake snow that I had bought last year for my friend's Winter Onderland party but it wasn't used. And I had bought a package of snowballs post Christmas for this and we pulled out the wool ones I needle felted for her last year.

Then she gathered all of her dolls and animals. After getting them all around, she needed to feed them all. Ducky and Princess Teddy got seats of honor on the table. (See top picture) And of course Hazel needed to dress-up. She wanted to do the tea party before she took her bath and got dressed, so we are still in our pajamas, but she added on her tutu, ballerina top, wings, and crown and was carrying her wand part of the time.

Finally we were ready for our party. We sat on the snow covered floor and read books while we drank tea and Hazel finished her raisin bread toast from breakfast. Then we had a snowball fight.

Gathering all the snowballs and making a snowball pyramid

Then she wanted to play with her white balloon, but since we only had one white balloon, she gave it to me and used a red one. 

Now it was time to take her bath and for us to get dressed so we could have a special lunch out before her appointment. We had such a fun day. We still have our winter wonderland set up, but will have to pick it up tonight or tomorrow since the cleaning people come Monday morning.