I have tons of Christmas books that we had a great time reading. We made Christmas cookies with play dough, and made lots of ornaments and loved the glitter glue a little too much. We had Christmas cards and a mailbox at the writing center and had so much fun writing and sending them to each other! It was really sweet to watch.
**This part of the post was added later, and I can't believe I forgot it! I made these Christmas Tree counting cards because of how much the kids liked the apple and acorn tree counting cards from the fall. I decided to add ornaments to these trees in the correct number to help with their counting. The fall trees were geared for 5-year-olds and I think this helped bring the activity to a more independent 3-year-old game. Then I put the papers on cookie sheets, and added magnets to Christmas-y pom poms. The kids liked it a lot. It was an extra activity in my hallway the second week so as I help get kids into snow gear, the ones who are done or waiting have something to do. I used all free commercial use clip art to make this, so I'm sharing it with you here. I don't know how to create a zipped file, so they're all separate.
We had some great large groups too. I especially enjoyed reading and discussing the Grinch. They don't always sit quietly for story time and I questioned doing a long book, but they were mesmerized! We talked about maybe not getting presents on Christmas, but being happy to be with our family and they got super chatty talking about all the people in their families and how much they love them. It made my heart melt a little :) We tried to think of nice things that would make the Grinch's heart keep growing and got a great list. Thanks for all of you who did it as homework too! We really helped our Grinch out! Some of their ideas:
- give presents
- share
- help someone who fell down
- hold my baby brother
- give someone a hug
- play games with your family
p.s. anyone know how to rotate a pic in blogger? not me!
I always love finding out what these kids learned in a week or two, and they really surprised me! We learned about the word "compare" and thanks to another Sesame Street podcast, I think we got a great hold of that word. We then compared Hanukkah to Christmas and I could not believe how much they remembered about Hanukkah from just one day! They were throwing out suggestions like crazy for our venn diagram, and always knew the right place for me to write it. These kids are brilliant. Love them.
The big highlight was our Christmas party. It was crazy and fun! I am so glad we had moms and grandmas there to help! Thanks to everyone for the donations as well! It made for a fun party. We stared off decorating our sugar cone Christmas trees and eating lots of candy! We had self-select time before we settled down to read the Polar Express. Then we got to make our silver jingle bell necklaces. Threading those pony beads on the ribbon was hard work for little fingers, and that's why it's such a great fine-motor skill! We then got to go upstairs for the first time. This was so fun for them! They helped count and scoop the hot chocolate into the maker, pour in popcorn kernels and watch them pop, melt and pour butter, shake popcorn bags, and make their own sugar cookie. We watched Frosty the Snowman while we enjoyed all of our treats. They also loved seeing my baby and the other two baby brothers visiting with their moms! After the movie and clean-up, we headed back downstairs to wrap their presents for you and make their cards. We finished just in time for Show and Tell and we rushed on home! I'm sad I didn't get a group picture in their cute jammies, but we were just so busy having too much fun all day!
Thanks for all your help all week! I couldn't have done so many fun things without all of your help! Enjoy your break and see you back soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment