Merry Christmas!

The theme for the third week of December was "Merry Christmas". It was a very short week for us, with a half day on Christmas eve and off on Christmas, so we had a lot of fun planned with our small winter break group!

This week we read: How Do Dinosaurs Say Merry Christmas? by Jane Yolen
                                 How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss
                                 The Night Before Christmas by Clement C. Moore
                                 Snowmen at Night by Carolyn Buehner

Our question of the week was "What would your elf name be?"

For our theme "Merry Christmas", we got ready to celebrate! It was the beginning of Winter Break for the public schools, which means we had a smaller group than usual. We did a lot of fun activities, played games and had an all around good time. We checked out these Christmas ISpy books.

We sang the song "Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer"! and went back to our very loud rendition of "Jingle Bells".

Using pipe cleaners we made two different ornaments. To make a tree the kids picked out some beads and strung them onto a green pipe cleaner. Then we folded them back and forth to make an abstract tree shape.
To make a candy cane, the kids strung fruity cheerios on pretty striped pipe cleaners. Great for fine motor skills! Some kids made patterns, some only looked for certain colors, and some just had a blast with it!

We made hot chocolate! I wrote up a recipe on the whiteboard, and we went step by step... yum!

We wrote in journals about "I want for Christmas..." Each child has a journal that they write in every week. When we focus on a letter, they write for that letter. On shorter weeks and during our review later in the year, they write to the theme. This is such a great way to get children excited about writing and reading. I start the children out by tracing, and once they are comfortable and controlling the crayon well, they move onto copying.

I cut up small pieces of red, peach and white construction paper so we could made Santa Mosaics. I introduced the kids to mosaic art, and showed them some examples. Then we talked about how to make a picture of Santa. I love how each one is unique!

The school hosted a Christmas Party where the kids got to see Santa! While waiting for their turn, they each made a popsicle stick tree ornament! So cute!

On Christmas Eve we were open for a half day, so we had SO MUCH FUN with the small group that came to hang out. We played with my treasure boxes, played an extra long time in centers and in the gym, and watched Christmas short movies. The Grinch, Merry Madagascar Christmas and The Elf on the Shelf movie.

Playing Santa, Santa, Reindeer was a great game to play to get the kids moving.

A little off theme...
The class had a little more practice with the letter M from one of the Mailbox Letter of the Week books. The kids colored an ice cream sundae and added M marshmallows on top!

The day after Christmas this year began Kwanzaa, so we started to talk about the holiday. The kids painted a picture of a Kinara, and we talked about the colors of Kwanzaa to paint.

I made this memory game last year and we played it. Memory is a great game because you can easily change the difficulty based on the players by adding or taking away some pairs.

 Leave a comment below and let me know that you stopped by!

The North Pole! (Ll, 9, Grey)

The theme for the second week of December was "North Pole". We used this week to get ready for Christmas celebrations. We continued our Letter of the Week study, with the letter L. This week we started talking about colors with the color gray, and we kept going on our number study with the number 9!

This week we read: The Christmas Quiet Book by Deborah Underwood
                                        Duck and Goose, It's Time for Christmas! by Tad Baker
                                        How Santa Got His Job by Stephen Krensky
                                        Bear Stays Up for Christmas by Karma Wilson
                                        Fletcher and the Snowflake Christmas by Julia Rawlinson

In our sensory table we popped popcorn! They had so much fun watching the popcorn air pop, and grabbing it as soon as it shot out. We played with just the popcorn for a little bit, and then I added some christmas finger puppets.

Our question of the week was "If you went to the North Pole, what would you do?" Some of these answers were hilarious!

The color of the week: grey was a lot of fun to explore.  We talked about things that are the color grey and went on a hunt around our classroom to find things that are grey.

We sang "Three Grey Mice" to the tune of three blind mice.

Three grey mice, three grey mice,

Oh how nice, oh how nice.

They ran around the house at night, 

They found some cheese and had a bite,

The farmer's wife turned on the light,

As three grey mice, ran from sight.

For the number of the week: 9 we started off by counting to and backward from nine. They love doing this every day and when we get to the end of counting backward, they all scream blast off!! ;) The kids also practiced writing the number and word for nine. 

When I started in my room I found some papers in my room I found a random number page like this from education.com, so I made my own for the number 9. The children have to practice writing the number and then color in that number of squares. What a great way to introduce graphing and helps them to work on their one-to-one correspondence.

From The Complete Book of Numbers and Counting, I found this picture to color using a key of the number 9.

For our theme "North Pole", we decorated Christmas lights to help make our classroom a little more festive. I drew the outline of a bulb and let the kids decorate them however they wanted.

We sang the song "Jingle Bells" a lot! and very loudly.... very loudly.

The kids also made reindeer art with construction paper, google eyes, q-tips and pom poms. I found the idea for this project here! On that page their is other great ideas for using triangles in winter art projects.

This week we started working on the kid's Christmas gifts to their parents. One of our teachers found the idea here, and we thought it would be great if all the classes made the same gift. To start this week, we made the salt dough and cut out the shapes. Then the children pressed their thumbprints into the trees and we baked them at a low temperature for a few hours. DONT FORGET TO MAKE A HOLE FOR HTE RIBBON BEFORE YOU BAKE. Narrowly avoided a catastrophe there!
The oven at school doesn't have a very accurate thermometer, so i just checked them constantly until they were not soft anymore, but before they began to brown.

Salt Dough

2 cups flour

1 cup salt

1 cup warm water

When the trees were baked and cooled, I used Modge Podge to seal the surface where we will paint next week.

For wrapping for our gifts, I drew the outlines of a gingerbread house onto a white paper bag that the children each colored. I thought that would be a festive, unique way to wrap the gifts for their parents. Check out last year's post, where we used brown bags to see which way you like the most!

The letter of the week: L activities that we worked on this week were were lots of fun! Usually to start off the letter, I would use a the page from, Sounds Like fun, Phonemic Awareness, but I actually found a page in a Mailbox Letter of the Week book that I preferred, because it had more words for the children to work with. They had to decide which pictures were of things that began with "L", color them, cut them out, and then glue them onto "Ladybug's Leaf".

While playing outside I yelled out some words. If it began with the "L" sound, the children had to leap across the area. It really got their blood pumping!

From the book Alphabet, Colors, Numbers and Shapes, the kids practice letter recognition AND direction following. Some weeks certain letters have to be colored specifically and sometimes it's up to them. I love these!

I created envelope games for each letter of the alphabet. I adapted them from activities from Mailbox Letter of the Week projects, both book one and two. The children had to place the "L" leaves on the tree. All the other letters? Fall came a bit early!

As we work through the alphabet, the children make projects to go on  our "alphabet wall". It's a very fun way for the class to see the alphabet in a new way. This week we glued green tissue paper squares to construction paper and made leaves to make our trees extra leafy!

The children turned a capital letter L into a lion. I got the idea from the book Alphabet and Counting from Twin Sister Productions. They give tips for how to make it a glue and paste projects, but I like to give them crayons and the challenge to add the parts of the animal to the letter. It opens up room for more conversation about the shape of the letter AND the features of the animal.

We practice and work on our handwriting for each letter as well. The Original Summer Bridge Activities, for PreK-K has great handwriting practice sheets. The kids trace and write the letters and then have a little phonics practice at the bottom.

Each child has a journal that they write in every week. When we focus on a letter, they write for that letter. On shorter weeks and during our review later in the year, they write to the theme. This is such a great way to get children excited about writing and reading. I start the children out by tracing, and once they are comfortable and controlling the crayon well, they move onto copying.

From a Mailbox Letter of the Week book, the kids made a booklet about "Lizard's Lollipops". I like doing these kinds of books because they can go back and look at the pictures to help tell the story, and they are also able to do the project mostly on their own. When they are finished coloring the pages, they come and get their scissors. When they are finished cutting, they bring their pages to me, put away their scissors and clean up their area of paper scraps. I love it!

I made a cube of cardboard and glued pictures of "L" things one each side. The children say "Ladybug, Ladybug, what do I see.... I see a ____ looking at me!" They roll the cube and fill in the blank. This idea came from a Mailbox activity book, and let me tell you, it was a hit!! They loved it!

During the week we made a list of words that begin with the letter L. Here is what we thought of!

 Leave a comment below and let me know that you stopped by!

Merry Christmas! (M, 10, Green)

Our theme for the third week of December was "Merry Christmas" and we focused on the letter Mm, the number 10 and the color green.

  

We read this week: How Santa Got His Job by Stephen Krensky
                               Duck and Goose, It's Time for Christmas by Tad Hills
                               The Christmas Quiet Book by Deborah Underwood
                               Bear Stays Up for Christmas by Karma Wilson
                               Fletcher and the Snowflake Christmas by Julia Rawlinson

Our question of the week was "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I like to think that I know my kids very well, but some of these answers were a surprise to me, and Moms and Dads!

For our theme of the week, we had fun getting ready for the holiday!

I drew "gingerbread houses" onto paper bags that the kids colored however they wanted. These are what I put their ornaments from last week in to give to their parents. They were a big hit!

Using just beads, green pipe cleaners and some string we made really cute and artsy tree ornaments. I hung them on our class tree to make it a little more festive. I found the idea here.

We also had our school Christmas party! Santa came too!

We talked about the color green, and we sang "G-R-E-E-N" to the tune of "Old MacDonald."

"There’s a color we all know,

G-R-E-E-N.

It’s the color that means “Go!”

G-R-E-E-N.

Oh, grass is green and lettuce is green,

Leaves and spinach and peas are green.

There’s a color we all know,

G-R-E-E-N."

I found it here.

When we focus on a color I love to do "color hunts" in our classroom. Each child takes a turn to walk

around the classroom and bring back something that they found that is green. The tricky thing is that they have to bring different things, no duplicates allowed! Here is what we found for the color green.

When we worked on our number activities, we practiced writing the number and word for the number 10.

I made these worksheets that reinforces the one to one concept. The kids practice writing the number and have to color a square for each picture that they see.

I gave each student 10 M&M's to count and then color on their paper. The best part? They got to eat them!

For our letter activities, we used our handwriting sheet for the letter Mm from this book.

We also did this worksheet that helps work on letter recognition that I got from this book.

The students also wrote in their journals for the letter M.

We turned a M into a Mouse! This book is great.

We made a short book all about "Monkey's Lunch" that I got from this Mailbox book.

When learning about the phases of the moon, whats a better way to practice than with Oreos!

I found this video about Mallomars and another that really shows how the marshmallow cookies are made. Then we all ate one!

I cut up small pieces of red, peach and white construction paper so we could made Santa Mosaics. I introduced the kids to mosaic art, and showed them some examples. Then we talked about how to make a picture of Santa. I love how each one is unique!

For our alphabet wall we used dot paint to decorate mangoes.

Here are the words we came up with this week!

We had a birthday this week! It's all about Batman.

Up next week: "Kwanzaa and Happy New Year!"