Christmas in the Classroom

One of my favorite things about teaching young kids is the sheer amount of themed projects you can do around the holidays. Literally every concept you could teach can be tied into Christmas in some shape or form. I love it!

Here's a glimpse of some of the Christmas projects we did throughout the month of December, all from Pinterest (of course).

Handprint Christmas trees given to moms and dads. Every month I try to do something with handprints or fingerprints as mementos for parents.

from here

A felt Christmas tree and felt shape ornaments to decorate over and over again. The tree was a big hit all month.

from here

I found this super cute font at dafont.com and had to use it for name practice. I cut out the ornaments and the kids worked hard to color them and spell their names.

ornament font found here

I found the motherload of all printable units from Confessions of a Homeschooler. Twenty plus pages of prewriting practice, coloring, sequencing shapes, and so on. I promptly printed the packet out and slipped them into our "marker pages" for handwriting practice.

 from here

We also did candy cane patterns, colored nativity scenes and read plenty of Christmas books. One of my favorite Santa + Jesus books is Santa's Favorite Story by Hisako Aoki and Ivan Gantschev.

I've gotten quite a few non-Christmas activities from Pinterest as well, and all of them have been pretty popular.

These are what the kids call our "counting flags". They're not the most popular activity, but the kids come over, play with them for a few minutes, then leave for something else. (Since they're only three, I rarely make them do an activity once their interest wanes. Learning should still be fun at this age.) They all quickly picked up that zero means "nothing" all thanks to the flags. I told them its a trick number because it doesn't get any beads.

 from here

This next counting activity is another one from Confessions of a Homeschooler. Its very simple-- place one object on each square, then count.

from here

This clothespin ABC activity has been used for the longest amount of time and is still going strong. I don't bring out each activity every day, but the clothespins appear pretty consistently. We have name cards that all the kids use and this ABC strip for the ones who know more of their letters and are more willing to sit still for longer. :)

 from here

 Last but not least, I've gotten a few ideas for file folder games. I had a ton of paint strips at home that I've accumulated from various projects, so I cut them up and attached velcro and a color matching activity was born.

 idea from here

I've got plenty more activities pinned and waiting for January, most around the theme of 'snow'. We'll be lucky if we get any actual snow, but at least inside we'll be seeing plenty! 

See my Pinterest board here.