Merry Christmas!

Christmas Centers!

It has been a mixed up and busy couple of weeks! Everyone is excited for Christmas, and we have had lots of holiday fun and learning at our centers for the past several days. We couldn't always have our structured color groups and rotations on days with singing practice, but we still had lots of large and small group activities each day. With all the schedule changes and extra craft and present projects, the camera did not come out quite as much, but check out a few of our activities below!

Jj is for Jesus- we combined learning about the letter Jj with the nativity story. Last Wednesday, Pastor Andy came and spent some time sharing the first Christmas story with the kids, and answering lots of questions. We also made some nativity sticker scenes, and enjoyed playing with our nativity sets and flannel boards on multiple days.

 

We had a ball looking through tons of toy catalogs and making our Christmas wishlist stockings. This was a great opportunity to talk about presents, giving AND receiving, and being grateful for all the presents we receive. We also thought about how we all want lots of things, but we probably won't get everything on our Santa lists. 

 

We got in a little writing practice with our candy canes and red glitter sand.

Building with the magnetic blocks is always fun, especially when you add jingle bells and decorate the buildings for Christmas!

The morning with the most fun might have been when we made Christmas cookies! We rolled the dough into a ball, patted it out with our hands and the rollers, and cut out some trees and bells. After adding sprinkles, we baked them up for our snack. Yum!

Hello, December!

We came in from our long Thanksgiving vacation ready to finish up November and jump into December! Each day at least one of centers was working on our holiday surprise for our family, so no pics of those yet.

We made our new placemats by lining up holiday paper strips from longest to shortest to make the shape of a tree. Our calendar needed us to carefully cut out a circle with numbers and turn it into a snowman that can help us countdown the days until Christmas. 

Just move his nose one number each day!

 

You might hear some more singing at home than usual as we practice our Christmas carols! Every day, we take 10 minutes or so to learn our songs for our Christmas program on Friday, December 16. We also used awesome cutting and glittering skills to make ourselves angel wings for our tree angels.

 Hark! Our herald angels sing!

Our tree shirts are beautiful! We have finished all the green trees, and have started taking turns to add shiny ornaments. We will be dressed to impress at our Christmas party!

Our sensory bin has changed again. We are loving the green noodles, red bows, stockings, jingle bells and nativity finger puppets.

It's starting to feel a little cooler outside. After reading our magazine together about how chipmunks gather up food and get ready to sleep the winter away, we went outside with the corn from November's sensory bin to help our squirrels and crows fatten up for cooler weather. We had a super fun time tossing all the corn in the woods, and imagining all those animals finding their snacks.

Our other reading center had us coloring in Christmas bulbs to go with our color words in a little book called Green Light, Green Light What Do You See?

We built lots of letters with our letter builders, and cool structures with the geometric magnet blocks. Our train track also came out for some track design.

 

Our class tree has been decorated, undecorated, and redecorated many times!

We also enjoyed using our felt boards to create Christmas scenes with trees, Santa, reindeer, and the nativity pieces. Ms. Heather got to hear some funny and creative stories being told as pieces were added to each scene.

After all the holiday learning and projects, everybody is ready to let loose with all that wild energy on the playground. Holiday fun with friends is the best!