Olive / Rudolph Game

One of our favorite Christmas books (and I'm sure a lot of other peoples' too) is Olive, the Other Reindeer.  Olive, an adorable little dog hears people singing "All of the other reindeer..." and understands it to be "Olive, the other reindeer..."  She decides she must be a reindeer instead of a dog and departs immediately for the North Pole to help Santa.  Santa (being the generous guy he is) decides to go ahead and let her be a part of the team leading his sleigh.  Though she can't fly, Olive helps in other unexpected ways.  She chews Santa out of the tree he becomes tangled in (dogs are good at chewing things), she retrieves the flutes that fall out of the sleigh (dogs are good at retreiving stick-like things) and she sniffs her way back to the North Pole through the fog (dogs are good at smelling things, especially cookies baked by Mrs. Claus.)  Olive proves to be so useful that Santa makes her an honorary reindeer and they all head out to play reindeer games.

So we did too!  You pretty much cannot read Olive without singing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer so this is sort of a combination game.  Put a nose on Rudolph or throw a ball to Olive.  I started by cutting some holes in the top of an empty ice cream bucket.

I printed off some pictures from the internet.  I also covered the bucket with wrapping paper to make it a little more festive. Meet Olive and Rudolph:

I gave the kids some bouncy balls and we tried to bounce them into the holes in the top of the bucket.  Drew loves anything resembling sports.  I was worried it was going to be too hard but he got quite a few in.  I'm sure with older kids you could assign different point values to the holes and practice a little math but we're not quite ready for that yet.

As usual, Lainey went the more logical route and just placed the ball directly into the bucket.

Drew loved it so much he took it to bed with him last night.  (The game, not the book.) 

Thanks for joining me for Day 3 of Ready. Set. Read! and Reading Confetti's 12 Days of Christmas!   Head on over there to see what Jackie's up to today.  Yesterday, she reviewed Llama Llama Holiday Drama (love that llama) and did a cute craft with her 22 month old son.  Sometimes it's so hard to come up with something for the really little ones, isn't it?  This is an easy and quick Christmas tree craft that they'll really be proud of!

Linking to It's Playtime!, What are little boys made of?, JDaniel4's Mom, What My Child is Reading