Christmas

 As I always say, we had a great time these last 2 weeks! How can you not have fun, celebrating the holidays?

 Dramatic Play
We went back to the housekeeping dramatic play (always a favorite) with the addition of 2 Christmas trees (one was a felt one on the wall) and Christmas masks. The kids love the masks and had fun playing "Santa Claus" and delivering presents, made from empty boxes I had wrapped and placed under the tree. The mirror was awesome this week because they loved switching masks and checking themselves out.


 
 Blocks 
The block area was taken over by the Christmas tree and fake presents, plus the felt tree on the wall. This is also where we collected your donations, under the tree in big wrapped boxes. I also had the doll house out. Maybe the old-fashioned feel of a doll house under s Christmas tree makes me think of Christmas. The dolls even had their own little tree.


Art 
We made snowflakes for our class tree. I had the paper cut into squares and folded, and they only had to cut it. I knew it'd be hard, but they did a great job! I was impressed. They all cut off the corners because that was the easiest, some cut out a few more shapes, and they mostly cut slits. I only had to help a little. They loved opening them to see their creation! We then added glue and glitter. It was a fun mess!

 Day 2, we painted the salt dough ornaments they had made Tuesday. They were all colorful and bright! A true preschool masterpiece. You can see a few on our tree.

 We decorated these styrofoam "trees" with pipe cleaners and pony beads from here. It was planned as a fine motor activity for the small manips area, but it fit better at the art table. I honestly didn't expect it to be a big hit, but they all did it! They really wanted to take them home too, but they stayed at school. It was a really good fine motor skill that required a lot of concentration. I was also pleasanly surprised when I checked them out to see how many patterns were made, with no help or prompting to do so by me!

 
We played with peppermint playdough. I used my usual recipe, but added some peppermint extract so they smelled like candy canes. It still smelled like playdough, but left their hands peppermint-y and they loved that. Some even tasted it, and regretted that. We had Christmas cookie cutters and this was a very popular center!

 Small Manips
We had Christmas ABC and picture puzzles.

We played Charlie Brown Christmas dominoes.

We played with the counting tree magnets. There are magnets on the pom poms so they can attach to the trees on cookie sheets. It's a great counting activity. I made the sheets with non-copyrighted pictures, so you can download them here if you want to try them out at home.


I made this bean bag toss board, and the kids loved having a fun and active game, that required sharing and taking turns! It was a hit.

We had out 2 books on cd, The Polar Express, and The Night Before Christmas the whole 2 weeks too. 

Writing 
This is usually a rotation of stamps, stickers, and stencils in addition to the writing materials always available, so Christmas added a fun twist.
We had Christmas cards out the first day, and I put them away, except every day they begged for them, so I had to pull them back out each day. They wrote and delivered them to each other for 4 days and it was so cute and kind!
 We also had Christmas stamps and stickers.
 

 Snack 
Besides the usuals, we had Christmas tree waffles for snack. The kids helped prepare the batter, then cleaned up as I cooked them. I cut their waffles into 4 triangles and stacked them to look like trees. I got the idea from here on pinterest, but ours weren't quite as fancy :) They were tasty, and almost each kid ate 2! 

Here's the recipe we used (they especially loved beating the egg whites)
1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 1/4 cups milk
1/2 cup oil
Mix together dry ingredients. Combine egg yolks and milk. Stir into dry ingredients. Stir in oil. Beat egg whites until very stiff. Fold into batter. Don't over mix. Makes about 8 waffles.

The last day, we bagged the healthy thing for once, and decorated sugar cookies that we ate with hot (lukewarm) chocolate. It's Christmas :)

Outside
Snow. We figured if I dress them as we eat snack, we can get 10-15 minutes of outside time before we need another 5-10 minutes to get boots and coats off for large group. It's time consuming, but they need the active time, and they love it so it's worth it. We did have 2 inside days with the inversion and storm.

 Large Group 
We read "Merry Christmas Mouse" and "If You Take a Mouse to the Movies" with my stuffed mouse as incentive to listen quietly (we passed it to good listeners as we read). We wrote our favorite Christmas traditions in our journals, then instead of small group, our Mom helper helped us make salt dough hand print ornaments. Their favorite part seemed to be helping make and mix the dough. They each rolled them out themselves too and did a great job!
 Day 2, we celebrated St. Lucia Day and read about and looked at pictures of how they celebrate in Sweden. For small group, we split into boys and girls to make our hats. The boys made cone "star boy" hats and the girls made candle wreaths. I wanted to get a group picture, but as they finished we were getting coats on and such and just run out of time.

 Day 3 was all about Christmas trees (this is the day we had the counting trees in small manips, the styrofoam trees in art and trees for snack). We read "The Best Christmas Tree Ever" and then made our name trees. Man, these kids are SMART! I had their trees cut with the letters of their name, and they had to spell out their name to make their tree. Then they used their markers to decorate their trees with ornaments. Without prompting, they started comparing names and counting how many letters each person had, who had more and fewer, and which letters were the same and different. I never had to lead the conversation or butt in, yet they were doing all sorts of great learning from each other!
 
 Day 4 was about finishing our service project for The Road Home. A HUGE THANK YOU to all of you for donating. We were able to go above and beyond my original plans, and add a few extra items to each kit, plus have boxes of donations beyond just the Hygiene kits, so thank you! During snack, I started the movie, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and they gathered on the floor to watch once they finished. I then called them over one at a time, so they could each pack a kit. They were very thoughtful in picking things they liked the best. Each kit had: shampoo, soap or body wash, washcloth, comb or hair brush, tissues, hand sanitizer, toothpaste, tooth brush, flossers, chapstick, a toy, plus a crocheted stuffed animal (hand-made by my Grandma, the Great-Grandma of 4 of our students). The bags were even hand made by one of our preschool grandmas so the kids have a good bag to keep!
 
 
 
 
We had to cut the movie short (skipped some scenes to end it quickly, but I explained them all and they got to watch the ending). We played 2 active games (it was needed on a day we skip outside play). The first was finding Gingerbread Men and Women around the preschool, by searching for the ones that matched the ones I had. The second game was this one from Pinterest. They LOVED it and I highly recommend if for getting some wiggles out! We then passed out some presents, and did small group before heading home on a crazy snowy day!

Small Group
The first week we skipped it, for help in large group activities.
The second week, we made candy canes with pipe cleaners and pony beads. It was a good fine motor activity, and patterning activity to practice our math skills.
My group made handprint Christmas trees.
 

4 Seasons Review

This was a really fun 2 weeks, reviewing the seasons. If I can say they really learned anything all year, it's about the seasons! We talked and sang about them every day, plus already had a week in depth about each one. We took these 4 days, and each day was about 1 of the seasons. They had fun seeing old things come back too.

Fall
Dramatic play all week was camping, because it's the only way I could think to change all 4 seasons and show it each day. So we started with a tent covered in orange leaves, and other fall leaves scattered all over the ground. I didn't take pictures any of the days, but it's a repeat from our fall week here.
And if you looked there, you'll see the other fun things I brought back, like the fall pattern cards and apple tree counting cards.

Winter
The leaves were gone around the tent, and instead there were white sheets for snow, plus reindeer and polar bears. Similar to here. I also brought back the fake snow with the polar animals in it and that was the favorite for the day. Did I ever mention I found some at Dollar Tree this winter? Mine is from Steve Spangler's site, but for a small amount, the dollar store would be the way to go.

Spring
The tent was now surrounded by spring flowers. I brought out the road mat in the blocks area with the cars, and that was the hit of the day. Just starting Favorites week a little early. We also did spring sponge painting in art with flower and bug sponges. We learned about the water cycle too and watched boiling water turn to steam, and also filled cotton balls with water, then watched them "rain." We sang the water cycle song and learned the big words evaporation, condensation, and precipitation.

Summer
We totally lucked out with a hot day in the 90s this day! I planned the water party to be this day, knowing it may change with the weather, and I'm thrilled we had the only hot day of the whole month! We weren't inside long, since they were so excited to get outside. We cleaned up early, ate snack fast, then whizzed through large group to get ourselves outside and enjoying the sunshine! I had 2 small wading pools, plus the sensory table filled with water. There was a sprinkler going, plus I made some big batches of bubbles. There were fish toys and rubber ducks in the pools too. The sensory table had cups and scoops and bottles to play with. We had a great time, running around crazy from thing to thing, and I'm so glad for the warm weather!

4 Seasons book
Each day in large group we did a page in our 4 Seasons book. The words are from the song, Round and Round the Seasons Go that we sang each day (that way, they can go home and read it to their families). Here's each page:
Fall: tissue paper painted with liquid starch
 
Winter: glue and glitter for snow (could have done on darker paper, but I like them to all be the same)


 
Spring: split peas glued on like leaf buds (one girl was so precise and exact and it looks awesome)
 
 
Summer: green paint for full leaves. Their favorite one. They could not stop painting.

I always offered crayons first if they wanted to color the trees brown, or add a scene. Many added flowers in the spring and a sun for the winter and they sometimes colored their trees, but they were all more into the new thing we were going to add.

 Want to make a book for your preschoolers or kiddos? There are so many possibilities for each season, and here's your pages to download and print, easy peasy!
Click here to download.
I also printed out a cover and then stapled the books together. I bound them in Kinder because I had access to the equipment and supplies for free, and that's another great option.

Christmas in Preschool

Winter Celebrations week then became Christmas! Our typical house-keeping dramatic play (which is a huge favorite) was transformed into a more Christmas-y home with a felt tree. Thank you pinterest! There was also a mini tree with mini ornaments and they had a great time decorating both trees. There were shoe box presents they could fill and pass out and they loved doing that! There was also a train-a huge favorite with the boys, and Christmas masks that were a huge hit. They loved being Santa, reindeer, and elves, etc!

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!