Decorating for Christmas

Nutcrackers and hazel nuts are in the white bowl.
Filberts are in the yellow cup -- all 7 of them.
Broken shells litter the floor.
Miranda should want to kill me.

... too tiny to see, but Betty is up front,  swinging her 
nutcracker tree decoration ...

Knowing that I will be in Calgary for Christmas this year, I decided to bring in from the garage, every possible possible Christmas decoration that I still have.

That is to say, I tried to give them all away, and have been successful with some.

But those that are left? They were all coming inside this year, I thought, at least for a sort and repair.

There were literally boxes of nutcrackers:  tall, medium, small, mini-sized, traditional, modern, some from Germany, some from China -- I seemed to have them all.  And I began to tuck them in every corner of my house.

Pedagogical question:
Is it better to learn by doing?
Or better to be warned that fingers are about to be pinched?

The children and I have studied the nutcrackers, played with them, carried them around, decorated a small tree with them, then taken the decorations off, and then put them back on,  but most of all, Michael has wanted to use them to crack nuts.  Because me telling him that my nutcrackers are ornamental wasn't enough, I went to Safeway to buy some nutcrackers and some nuts.

So we are back to the old fashioned Christmas, the one that involves hand-cracking nuts and pulling the meat out with little picks, if the cracking goes wrong.

Or we use them on the play-dough if we need to make designs.  Our original nutcrackers are versatile.

This will be the Christmas that involves bruising little fingers when they get in the way of the nutcrackers being tightened.

Oh the fun of it!

Arta