setting up the festive classroom

our storybasket for the gingerbread baby

Our literature for the two weeks before the winter break is teaming with all sorts of festive goodness. This past week we read The Gingerbread Baby and next week we will be reading Rabbit's Gift. Here's a peak into our classroom for our week of gingerbread...

sorting gingerbread men

investigating area w gingerbread men and pom poms

gingerbread felt fun

candy memory/matching game

decorating our play gingerbread house

exploring our toaster set to accompany our nursery rhyme

dot marker holiday trees

fine motor dreidel fun

fine motor tree decorating

paint a wooden ornament {and wrap it up!}

 

Blank wooden ornaments can be found at most craft stores. Usually fairly priced as $2 or $3 they can pack a lot of punch without breaking your piggy bank. If you pick them up now for next year you can get them for under fifty-cents (I need to do this)!

 

 

 

Use acrylic paints for the ornaments and let your kiddos choose two or three colors. I had the children at school pick two similar colors and we added white. We are always talking about the color wheel and complimentary colors. For this project we first talked about warm and cool colors and then the children got to decide of they wanted warm or cool colored paint for their ornaments. Young children love to mix paint together and they will mix any and all colors they can. This is science at its best and the children have ample opportunity to mix away in the classroom For this project however we focused on our colorwheel and went with colors that would not muddy up.

Use wax paper to lay the ornaments down to dry. The ornaments won't stick too much and any drippy paint will be left on the paper and not on your table. If we had any glitter left, I am certain the children would have glittered their ornaments up. Even without, the ornaments are snazzy, don't ya think?

After the ornaments were dry, it was time to wrap them up. We used plain white paper (their painted wrapping paper was a gift to take home) and washi tape. I placed each ornament on its own sqaure of paper and had the children fold and crease their presents. They chose which washi tape they wanted to use and I helped them tear off pieces in the size they indicated.

Next up was yarn. They chose the yarn and I tied it around their presents  (unless they wanted to o it) as they hit up the giftwrap table for a bow. After peeling off the back paper they stuck their bow where they wanted and proudly posed for a photo before running the present to their cubby. So cool!

a preschool classic: pinecone christmas trees

I remember making pinecone trees back in the 70s when I was a wee one. As a preschool teacher I had to have this available for my kiddos, had too! This time around, not only was there glitter but sequins too! 

 We found that it was easier to just pour the glue over the pinecone. Make sure there is wax paper underneath so that your pinecone does not stick.

 Some of the children pinched and dropped their glitter while other dumped a bottle or two onto their wax paper before grabbing as much as they could to sprinkle on top.

Sequins were added to a few as well. I love how the vintage white sequins turned out!

I looped a bit of yarn around the top so that the wee trees could be hung on a tree or elsewhere. The children got to choose between yellow, red, green, or blue yarn. Red was a favorite.Aren't they fun?

holiday play dough fun

 

 

My co-teacher whipped up a batch of gingerbread playdough for the kiddos to enjoy while I brought in a bag of tiny bows. We piled it all onto a thrifted tray (my magic place) with as many holiday cookie cutters as we could find and let the play begin!

thank you pinterest...

...and all you crafty bloggers out there who share your ideas! Last week we read Fletcher and the Falling Leaves and worked on all sorts of Thanksgiving fun found through pinterest!

 This fine motor activity was inspired by Twoodaloo. I used floral foam cut to fit one of our small wooden crates. The picks were made by me, using stickers from Michael's and construction paper. Out of all of these projects, this one took the most prep time but the children loved it! Though it may be that they really loves the sound of the toothpicks going into the foam. Feathers were great too!

 This awesome rainbow button turkey inspired by Raptor Mama. This one I did turn into a color matching game as well as the fine motor aspect of the buttons. My threes had a hard time at first but soon got the hang of it and played with it over and over again.

 This awesome clothespin turkey inspired by Pink and Green Mama. Thank you to mr. a-go-go for drawing me the turkey. I used scrapbook paper for the wings and a glitter paper for the base. I had wanted to do the color matching turkey but our local Michael's was out of rainbow feathers so I went with this instead focusing on the fine motor movement of pinch the clothespins.

And this semi-modern take on the classic handprint turkey from Things to Share and Remember. The children chose their own colors for their turkeys and I painted their hands. They drew in their legs and eyes and selected their beaks and waddles. The backgrounds were painted on the backs of cereal boxes and then hot glue to cardboard. They also painted their noodles for the handles. I love, love, love how they turned out!

pumpkin painting exploration

 The children in my class painted up wee pumpkins the week of Halloween. These were a work in progress for the week and had many stages of nifty going on.

 

We began with paint and paintbrushes. The children chose their colors and began painting. We stuck with one palette for each child as we were working on color mixing.

We discussed warm colors and cool colors.

 

I snapped these photos during the first round of paint. Love how the colors mix on the pumpkin itself.

Glitter was added then painted over then added some more.

 

Then the squeeze bottles came out and more exploration was had.

 

It's a bit of a beautiful mess isn't it?

father's day diy: wooden key chain/gift tag

So you've arted up some gift wrap for Dad's favorite candy bars now all you need is a nifty gift tag. Why not make the gift tag a part of the gift by turning it into a keychain?

Small packs of wooden discs can be found at your local craft store for very little. You can use a hammer and nail to create the hole or get all power tool happy and use a drill with a small bit. Grab a handful of discs and add a hole to each one.

Attaching the keyring can be tricky if your discs are compromised. One of our discs cracked but the rest were good. You can also use a short length of ball chain instead of a classic key ring.

Your children can paint up the discs are get a bit happy with markers.

Aren't they nifty? Happy Almost-Father's Day!

father's day diy: scrape art candy bar bands

This simple gift idea is another small one that packs punch. Why not repurpose your child's artwork into candy bar sleeves? If Dad loves chocolate but always has to share, why not pick up a trio of his favorite bars, just for him?

These candy bands were created using good old fashioned splatter and scrape art. We used one large sheet (11.5"X17") and painted up both sides. After it all dried, we cut it up into three pieces and wrapped each band around a bar. Our first cut was a bit smaller than we wanted but that was easy to fix with a long piece of tape.

 

The beauty of scrape art is that a few colors go a long way. Drip, drop, drizzle and scrape. That's all you need to do. If the first try comes out too dark or inky, allow the paint to dry a bit and blob on another layer of lighter paint and let your kiddo scrape and push the paint around.

You can use sturdy cardboard to scrape but an expired plastic giftcard has a bit more power behind it, is washable, and reusable. Those fake credit cards that come in the mail will also work. As will a wooden or metal spatula.

So simple. Paint, scrape, dry, cut and gift! You can also top it with a keychain...that post will be up later today. Happy painting!