Teach: Christmas Goodies

Have I mentioned that I am on a two week vacation? Wahoo! One of the many perks of being a teacher.

My fellow teachers (and spouses of teachers) understand the HUGE need that is this break. Some like to suggest that teachers "get it easy" and have too many vacation days... My friend, to you I say, please come in my Kindergarten classroom and see why I, along with all of my other teacher homies, need these breaks :)

Anyways, back to the goodies! These are a few of the MANY Christmas crafts lessons we completed in the month of December.

 

We made a "reindeer application" and said why we would be a great reindeer for Santa. I printed a black and white picture of each student (blurred for confidentiality reasons), drew on a red nose, and each student gave themselves antlers. They were required to write the word wall words (our high frequency words).

We reviewed our sorting skills by coloring and grouping like items together. 

We practiced name writing by creating a string of lights with each letter of our name (these turned out so cute: I had originally seen them using construction paper, but I like these just as much)!

We reviewed AB patterns by creating patterns out of ornaments (each child was required to color and create/extend their own pattern).

We discussed measurement and vocabulary words like shortest/longest, so each student colored five various lengthed rectangles green and then ordered them from shortest to the longest. Again, I have seen this done with construction paper, but green construction paper is limited by the time we get to Christmas! I also had them create a patterned border around the edge of their paper.

We counted down to Christmas by adding one cotton ball to Santa's beard each day! They l-o-v-e-d doing this and would always remind me, "Cotton ball!" This template (I found online) only went to 20, weird, so I added the rest onto Santa's hat.

We also counted down to Christmas by unwrapping multiple Christmas books throughout the day and reading for fun. 27 students means 27 Christmas books. They also enjoyed this and would eagerly wait for their turn to be next!

Now for the... dun, dun, DUNNNN, gift we created for parents:

So cute! I took each student's picture in front of a green curtain (and luckily, our uniform shirts are red: hello, holiday colors!) and had them wear reindeer antlers. I used my red stamp pad to "paint" their nose red (which you can't see because I blurred the face out for confidentiality). The students colored their popsicle sticks brown to create a frame, and my aide painted their hands brown to create antlers for the frame. I took everythinggg home and hot glued it all together. 

That is a LOT of reindeer frames! But the kids loved them, as did the parents (I'm sure). Even Chloe and Oliver are interested! 

Teachers: what did you create in your classrooms?

Parents: do you do Christmas crafts at home with your own children?