The Magic of Christmas

For the next few weeks we did lots of holiday activities. We talked about elves, and read this adorable story.

 Since we've been doing "Mat Man" from Handwriting Without Tears, we used the song to make an Elf Man to help us before we did our elf journals.

As you can see, they did a great job drawing their elves!

We talked about the Polar Express all week since we were going to have a Polar Express PJ party at the end of the week and Ms. Amy got us this fun snow for our sensory bin!

We also had chain making at the writing table. The peas could write a sight word or a Christmas word on a strip and add it to the chain. We used the chain to decorate! This is always a really popular center, they all love to do it.

It's great handwriting practice!



I love watching their sweet concentration faces and I LOVE littles handwriting.

See? So sweet. They did great!

At Naeyc we met the Handwriting Without Tears reps who were super nice. Ms. Molly got with them and arranged for Amy and I to attend a Handwriting Without Tears workshop. With our workshop we got a bag full of goodies, including these awesome flip crayons. We heard more about creating a good foundation for correct grip, how to strengthen little hand muscles and teaching left from right. Here's some of  the peas using the flip crayons. The small size forces them to use a correct grip and they love them! Oh, and how about the bottom right picture? I absolutely love watching them support and scaffold one another's learning by teaching and helping one another.

We made fruit loop candy candes with pipe cleaners, a fantastic fine motor activity that kept them busy for a while! Highly recommended for Christmas fun activity.

We also read this favorite, which melts my heart, I love it and it's such a great opportunity to really talk about what matters most during Christmas.

We made an anchor chart to discuss the Grinch's character traits. We also discussed what we could do to make the Grinch smile.

Afterwards, we made Grinch floats! They are just fun for our Grinch discussion, they are green and delicious!

For our parent's gifts this year, we made snow globe ornaments. I had the peas pose any way they wanted and then I cut them out and put them in a laminating film. Each pea made snow around them and sprinkled glitter on. When they dried we closed, them laminated, and cut them into circles. Aren't they precious?

For our annual ECDC caroling we sang this song:

And we turned Pre-K into reindeer! They were so cute, I couldn't stop taking their pictures. Ahhh, they're adorable!



Cutest Rudolphs ever.

Seriously!

That's just a FEW of the fun things we did the last few weeks. So, to end this post, here's a special message:

 and a Happy New Year!