Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts

Christmas is my SECOND favorite holiday. (Thanksgiving girl all the way right here, y'all!)  And I love learning and celebrating Christmas in the classroom, too!  Here are 3 of my favorite ways to learn and celebrate Christmas in the classroom.


Christmas Around the World

I remember when I was an elementary school kid and we learned about Christmas traditions around the world.  It's one of my fondest memories as a student and one of my favorite things to teach as a teacher!


My favorite way to teach this is with my team.  We each take on a country and then rotate our kids through our classrooms.  Some years, we did a "Christmas around the world" rotation every afternoon until we rotated through all of them.  Other years, we took 2 days and all we did was rotate through Christmas tradition classrooms. 


The kids LOVE learning about how different people celebrate similar holidays differently.  And I love helping them see how the United States is really just a melting pot of so many older traditions!


The best part about Christmas around the world is that it's not fluff.  At least in Arkansas, these lessons tie in nicely with our state social studies standards in learning about traditions, holidays, and customs around the world! #winning


You can read more about how we do Christmas around the world in this blog post!


Pancakes, Pajamas, & Polar Express

It's not Christmas in the classroom without a Christmas (or Winter) party!  Our first grade winter party was my favorite all year.  And it alliterates which makes it even better!! :)  Pancakes, PJs, and Polar Express!


If you haven't tried a breakfast party at Christmas, you are missing out.  Truth bomb:  Kids come to school on party day jacked up and ready for the party at the end of the day.  Reigning them in until the party is a next-to-impossible feat.


That's why a Christmas breakfast party is so genius.  Kids came to school in their pajamas and got to "party" right away.  I (and some parent volunteers) made pancakes for our Christmas breakfast party with all the fun toppings. My favorite is building Rudolph pancakes together!


And while we called this a "breakfast party," we also ended the day with hot chocolate and the Polar Express movie.  You can read all the details for this party in this blog post.


The Christmas Story

As a Christian teacher, nothing beats being able to teach my kids the REAL meaning of Christmas.  Of course, this is a no-no in public schools where I taught for 10 years.


But it is an absolute HIGHLIGHT in my preschool Sunday School class.  Preschoolers are one of my favorite ages because they are so literal, hilarious, and help remind you that play is the key to learning.


Each Christmas, we bring out the kids play nativity set to play and "rehearse" the birth of Jesus Christ. 


We play games.  We make Christmas sensory bins.  We make ornaments.  But most importantly, we talk about Jesus' birth and what it means to us all during our play and exploration.  You can find all these activities here and read more about the lessons in this blog post.

Christmas and crafts are almost synonymous.  I love making Christmas crafts with my kids at home and my school babies.  But the Christmas crafts serve a purpose--gifts for parents or gifts for teachers or church volunteers!  Read to find out 3 easy Christmas gifts I make with kids every year!


No Bake Gingerbread Ornaments

A teacher friend of mine introduced me to no bake gingerbread ornaments years ago and I've made them every year since.


In the classroom, we start these a week or two before Christmas break.  They take a few days to dry and make the room smell so super yummy!  We make the dough together and then I call back kids one at a time to cut out their gingerbread man.  Then, I write their name on the wax paper next to their ornament and we leave them out to dry and fill our room with Christmas smells!


We also make these with our kids at home the day after Thanksgiving.  And they make our kitchen smell just as yummy.  We've made these at home for 10 years and every year I keep one gingerbread ornament for our kitchen tree.  Even the very first gingerbread ornament we made still smells delicious a decade later!


You can read all the detailed steps and get the recipe for these in this no bake gingerbread ornaments blog post.


Rudolph Ornaments

Can I be honest with you?  Handprint ornaments are cute, but I'm a sucker for a craft made with wooden sticks.  That's why I love these Rudolph ornaments so much!


This one is a piece of cake for my first graders...almost.  The pipe cleaner antlers take some help for some kids with not as strong fine motor kids.  But I always have a handful of kids that are really good at twisting the antlers and walk around and help the others!


I also get premade red ribbons for the girls if they want them! :)  You can find the detailed step by step directions on this ornament in this wooden reindeer ornament blog post.


Christmas Potpourri Jars

We have about a bazillion and one people to give Christmas gifts to in our family.  Okay, I'm kidding.  Kinda.


But by the time we add up school teachers, OT/PT/ST therapists, church teachers for all the kids... it adds up!  And I don't know about you, but this momma can't afford a $20 gift basket for each one.


That's why we make Christmas potpourri jars every year for my own kids' teachers and volunteers. 


My mom has made this basic Christmas potpourri recipe since I was little.  I don't remember a Christmas without smelling stove top potpourri.  I put some on the stove starting the day after Thanksgiving when we decorate for Christmas, and every year, without fault, that smell takes me back to my childhood Christmases.  Isn't it amazing how smells do that?


When I was looking for a cheap, but thoughtful Christmas gift to give out in mass, I knew I needed to find a way to bottle up my Momma's Christmas potpourri.


I used her same basic recipe and added a few green twigs of pine or rosemary to make it prettier and every single year these gifts are a hit!  And with all the homemade Christmas candies that get exchanged each year, I love being able to give a smell!


Get the recipe and ideas for how I've packaged it over the years in this Christmas Potpourri blog post.


Painted Presents

Last, but definitely not least are painted presents.  We started this family tradition when my oldest was 3 years old and have continued it since then. I'm not big into buying Christmas cards for everyone, so this is our way of making "cards" for our family at Christmas.


I wrap all of our Christmas gifts in brown kraft paper and write names on the gifts in sharpie.  Then, once I have the gifts ready, we spend a family night painting.


We brainstorm Christmas pictures that we could paint to help the younger kids.  Then, we grab a box and get to painting.  We all paint--even Mom and Dad!  Every year I'm floored with how perfect they turn out.


For my 4 year olds, we are still doing handprint art on their boxes, but they will hopefully be able to paint on their own in the next year or two.


The grandparents LOVE this so much and keep all of their artwork from each year.  My kids talk about this every year now, and I hope it's a unique Christmas gift tradition that they always remember! You can see more closeups of presents we did a few years ago in this brown paper painted packages post.

One of my very favorite teacher gifts with Cooper each year are Christmas Potpourri Jars.  They are simple, fun to make and EVERYONE loves them!  

Oranges, cinnamon sticks, and whole cloves (although I sometimes use ground at home if I am in a pinch!...it just packages prettier in the jars to use whole!) And sometimes I add cranberries and twigs of pine to my mom's recipe for more color for the gifts.

Slice the oranges in fourths.  I put them in the jar this way too...much prettier to me than just a whole orange!  And they fit better!

 Add a layer of cranberries (this year Cooper practiced counting to 25 as he added them! :) ), then the oranges to the jar, then 2-3 cinnamon sticks....

Then add the rest of the ingredients....and spread some smiling Christmas cheer along the way!  Such an easy thing for littles to help with too!  Bless my little long haired baby!  Where did he go??

Turn on the heat and enjoy!  Isn't it so pretty?

For teacher gifts, we used the small mason jars {I really can't remember what official size they are...they were ones I just had around the house!}

In each jar, we put...
*4 slices of oranges
*a handful of cranberries
*close to a Tablespoon of whole cloves {no official measuring here, though!}
*a small twig of pine
*2 cinnamon sticks

A little craft paper circle to add some ruffles under the lid, a string of raffia and a tag. Here's a pic of the jar with the Christmas tag I made.  Simple, fun to make!





















This year, I just wrote our notes on top of the lids with a little washi tape.


Cooper is always so happy to give out his gifts.   And Mommy loves that he is learning at such an early age that, "God loves a person who gives cheerfully."
I'm so excited to start learning about the Christmas story with my preschoolers at church!  I only had 2 Sundays to do Christmas this year because of Christmas falling on a Sunday and vacation, but we still had fun squeezing in what we could!

Exploration Stations

My preschoolers LOVE our exploration stations for each of our Bible units.  And I love that their play is purposeful and connects to what we are learning.  I blogged in detail about exploration stations earlier, but here's a look at a few of our favs from our Christmas unit...

Christmas Story Ornament Match:

Nativity Pretend Play:

Christmas Sensory Tub:

Building a stable for baby Jesus...

Bible Story Time

During our bible story time, we read used the Bible story visuals from my unit to tell our story.

We had a key word to listen to {angels for this lesson} and they made a halo on their head every time they heard "angel" during the story.  I love adding in motions during story time to help our early listening skills! ;)

Retelling the Christmas Story

For this unit, we used the Who Am I? game from my unit to practice our retelling.  I put a character from our lesson in a Christmas gift bag and read the clues from the correlating cards to my preschoolers.  They had so much fun guessing who the Christmas character was and "opening presents" to find out if they were right!  {This would be perfect for older kids like first graders to do with partners once they can read!}

Coloring

After our Bible time, we play games and finish our coloring {coloring is one of our exploration stations at the beginning of Sunday School}.  I love setting aside some time for coloring in preschool because it's so important for practicing those fine motor skills and holding a pencil that are so important in handwriting!  Since my class this year is almost all boys (!), I've started playing a short kids song during our coloring time to give them a goal for focusing on coloring.  I start the song and they try to see if they can sit and color during the entire 2-3 minute song.  This has worked WONDERS for my boys!  They love listening to the music and singing along and I love watching their fine motor skills grow!

This week, we listened to Hark! The Harold Angels Sing! since our lesson was about the angels.  They had a blast listening for our focus word and making their halos while we were coloring too!



And I can't wait to make these adorable ornaments this coming week as we learn about the birth of Jesus!

Check out all of these activities and much, much more in this 70 plus page Bible Unit!

The kiddos were so excited to get Santa's workshop in full swing... Making ornament gifts for parents gets giggles every year and I love that sweet sound of cheerful givers in my classroom!  Read to find out more about the two ornaments we made for parents this year!

I've been making this Rudolph ornament for a really long time...probably at least 6 of the 9 years I've taught.  I found it on a friend's Christmas tree at a party a while back and thought it was adorably simple and cute!  My first graders can make this entire ornament without any adult help...which is one of the things I love about it!

The other ornament we made, ribbon Christmas trees, was a new one I found on Pinterest and loved!  And unlike the Rudolph, it needs LOTS of adult help....but is perfect to work on during table station rotations or to do during small group time those last few crazy days before break!

First, I cut 6 ribbons for each kid:
*2 eight inch greens
*1 seven inch green
*1 seven inch red
*1 six inch green
*1 six inch red

I also die cut yellow stars out of laminated yellow card stock.  The last thing I prepped was cutting brown pipe cleaners in half and adding a loop to the top for hanging.
I called the kids back in groups of 4 kids at a time.  The rest of the class worked on letters to Santa while I did this.  It's also included in my Elf Packet.
 

Anyways, in our small groups, they each got one of the 6 lengths of ribbons.  They each ordered the lengths of their ribbons from shortest to longest {Hello, Common Core math standard!}.  Then, they worked with a partner to help each other tie on the ribbons, tying the shortest one closest to the loop and working down to the longest.
 Once all the ribbons were tied, I tightened them and then "trimmed" the edges with scissors to make the ribbons into even more of a Christmas tree shape.  Last we added the star on top with some hot glue! **TIP: the ribbons are cut extra long to make it easier for little fingers to tie.  You trim them down to a more appropriate size when you trim the edges! :)**

 By the end of the day we had a stack of ornaments on our back table ready to be gifted!

Gifts and Christmas cards were sent home Thursday afternoon...with one day to spare before Christmas break!  What are your favorite ornaments to make with kids?  (Read more parent gift ideas here).
Years ago, I taught with a precious girl who made these yummy smelling gingerbread ornaments with her first graders.  They smelled so good you could seriously smell them all down the hall!  Through the years, I've made them as parent gifts with my first graders and when we had my son, we started making them at home for our kitchen tree.  It's a tradition I look forward to every Christmas!

I can smell them just looking at the pictures!! :)

*********************************************************************************
No Bake Gingerbread Ornaments Recipe:
*3/4 Cup cinnamon (1 tall spice bottle)
*1 Tbsp allspice (about 1/3 short bottle)
*2 Tbsp ground cloves (2/3 short bottle)
*1 Tbsp ground nutmeg (1/3 short bottle)
*1 Cup applesauce
*********************************************************************************

Mix all of the ingredients together.

Roll on wax paper.

Cut.

Repeat until you've used all of the dough.

Let dry on the wax paper...

Make a hole in the top with a tooth pick (when I made these in the classroom, the kids and I used a pencil to make the hole!)

It takes about 5-7 days for them to dry completely!  But man do they make your classroom and house smell like Christmas!  My first graders always loved the smell!

I added twine to mine this year for my tree, but you can add any yarn or ribbon you like!

This recipe makes about 12-15 so you will need to double the recipe for your classroom!

Wishing you and your family the happiest of holidays and a blessed Christmas season!  You can see them on our kitchen tree and the rest of our Christmas decorations HERE!

Earlier this week, I blogged about the content packed fun Christmas activities we did, but this little blog is devoted to all of those classroom celebrations for Christmas! :)

Parent Gifts

I love these gifts that the first graders make at my new school!  It's my first year for these and they turned out adorably!  One of my teammates got the 6 inch tiles donated from a local tile store so they were very little cost too!

And since one of my sweeties' moms is a first grade teacher at our school, he chose to do a different design to surprise her!

Didn't they wrap up so nicely? (One small group at a time.... *wink, wink*)

Cards for Parents

We made cards to go with our gifts this year and I love how fun they turned out.  I've done the Christmas trees before, but I wanted to give my kids a few more options this year.  I cut small strips of scrapbook paper.  I piled them by color on our back counter.  The kids grabbed the colors they needed and went to work.  I had my examples for them to copy, which most did....

But a few went off on their own.  One made a candy cane (which I didn't get a picture of) and another one made this present!

First Grade Gifts

So here's the teacher fail moment of the year....

I always get my kiddos the dollar book from Scholastic's December magazine issue as their main Christmas gift.  This year....no dollar book to be found.  And let's face it, my teacher salary can't afford $2.00 books for 25 kiddos every year!

So, I had to get a little crafty.  Since we were finishing our Fables Unit and had been reading How The Grinch Stole Christmas, I decided to make some Grinch-Doh...you know, home-made green play-doh with a little glitter added in.

First of all, I'm in love with how they wrapped up!  We played pass the present {on the word "Grinch"} while reading the story again, and the kids were super excited about their gift!
You can grab the gift tags HERE.

Besides the fact that I *failed* to get my kids a book for Christmas this year, my play-doh gift *failed* too.  Oh, it looked super cute.  But my kids begged to play with it.

And it was messy.

Like super bad messy.

Like the kind of messy where play doh sticks all over 25 kid's hands and they can't wash it off.

And the carpet.  OOOOHHHH, the carpet had play doh all in it!

So, yeah, it was pretty much a bust, but hopefully I can make it up to them at the end of the year! :)

And, actually, looking back on it, it was really a great gift idea...but maybe I'll try buying the play-doh next time and adding the glitter into that to keep it from being so messy!

Christmas Phonics

The week before Christmas Break, we took a break from phonics and just did review.  So, I supplemented with some Christmas poems from my Year Long Poetry Pack.  We focused on ordinal number words and quotation marks with this one!

Class Giving Project

I saved the best for last!  I am SUPER proud of my class this year.  As part of our Fables Unit, we read the Giving Tree (read about those activities HERE) and decided on a class service project.  We set a goal of giving 34 cans of food to our local food bank through our school's food drive.  We ended up giving over 75 cans of food--more than double our goal! (The picture was taken before our final cans came in!)
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