Paper Bag Gingerbread House and a Free Candy Sheet Printable

Phew!!  School's out and today is the first day of Christmas holidays! 

I'm most thrilled to have two weeks to wake up WITHOUT an alarm clock!  Ahhhh.......

Although school is on hiatus, we did so many fun activities this past month, I thought I'd squeeze in one more post before Christmas hits!

One of my favourite days this month was our unofficial "gingerbread man" day.

The day began by making a gingerbread craft.

This year we made gingerbread houses using paper bags.

The children coloured paper candies and a door and then glued those onto a lunch bag laid flat on the table.  

We had some fruit loops leftover from another craft, so we set those out for the children to glue onto the bag, as well.

Once the bags were fully decorated, we stuffed in some crumpled paper and stapled a roof to the top.

Here's another finished sample created by one of our 3 year olds.  
(Just pretend the dripping glue is icing!)

We continued the gingerbread theme at circle time.  

Each of the children were given some playdough
that was disguised to look like real dough by making it brown and adding spices.

(You know - teacher trickery!)

Each child used his piece to collectively create a giant gingerbread man on our cookie sheet.

When the g-man was fully shaped, we popped him into the oven "to bake."  

My daughters were volunteering that day and while our cookie was baking, they performed the gingerbread man story with puppets at our makeshift theater.

Usually we cover this theatre/storage shelf with a tablecloth to add some flair, but this day we didn't get to it.  
Not that the children cared.  
They just love the variety of having a puppet show at circle time!

While the kids were watching the puppet show, lo and behold, the gingerbread man magically "disappeared" from the oven. 

The class searched for the escaped cookie by following a series of clues that had been planted throughout our centre.

The gingerbread man was never found, but when we returned to class, he had left a cookie for each of the kids to decorate with icing and candies.  

Not a bad consolation!  

If you'd like a copy of a candy sheet to use for your own gingerbread house, click here to get a free download!

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Happy Holidays!

Christmas Gift Idea for Parents

We've been hard at work helping our class create Christmas gifts for their parents.  

We decided to paint some cork hot plates (trivets) for parents to use on their Christmas table. 
(You can find the cork circles at Michael's.)

My daughter made a hot plate for me in preschool long ago and I still have it.
 And I still use it!

To decorate our project, the children added a "snowman print" - with their foot!  

Pretty cute, no?

Here's how we did it:

Step 1 - Children paint the round cork board with blue or green acrylic paint.  Let dry.

Step 2 - Teachers paint the children's feet with white acrylic paint and help place feet on the cork to make the print 

Step 3 - Teacher or volunteer washes feet in a bin of soapy water.  (Children sit in one chair for the print and move to a chair right beside it for foot washing)

Step #4 - Teacher adds details to the foot print with a fine paint brush and Sharpie to turn it into a snowman

This step could also be done by the students if you choose.

You'll need:
 brown paint (stick arms)
 black paint (hat)
 black Sharpie (button eyes, nose, etc.)
 orange paint or Sharpie (carrot nose)

Once our gifts were finished, the children helped wrap them.  
Merry Christmas to you, parents!

Christmas Paper Plate Decoration

Wo boy!  Christmas is rapidly approaching.   

Time to catch up on some of the fun things we've been doing this season!

This past week we made some Christmas decorations out of paper plates.  They turned out quite cute!

To make this craft you'll need:

• small paper plates
• tissue paper cut into squares
• liquid glue (with water added to make it more runny)
• sparkles
• two squares of black paper to attach back to back at the top of the ornament
• string or ribbon for hanging

We teachers prepared the plates in advance by taping the loop of ribbon to a square black piece of paper and then stapling this square to the top of the plate.  

Add another black square paper to the back side if you don't want the taped ribbon to show.

Then the children painted the plate with the glue and stuck the tissue papers, decorations, and sparkles on top.

We had them decorate the front and back of the plate so that we could hang them in the windows on a paper garland.

We wanted them to look nice from both inside and out! 
Ta da! 

Next time around, I might have the children paint the plates first so that they look a little less "white" around the edges.  

That would make the project a two step process, but it might be worth it!

Have a Holly Jolly Preschool Christmas Party

This is the view I woke up to this morning on the last day of school before the Christmas holidays.  Hellooooo snowfall!

It was my daughters' excited shouts that caused me to run to the window to see it. What a great way to start winter break!  I just had to survive the slippery drive to school! 

Being the last day before break, it was Christmas party day with all the parents attending to see their little ones sing.  Or not sing!  One never knows how it will go!  

After the concert, we had a potluck lunch, and then we set out a few activities for the kids and parents to do together while mingling and waiting for our surprise Santa visit.

We had a Christmas Photo Station.  

We set up some chairs in front of a backdrop for the people being photographed to sit on and then laid out a variety of dress-up props.  

I think the most popular signs were the Naughty and Nice ones.  The kids loved to hold the Naughty sign with the arrow pointing at mom or dad!  

Other props included snowman hats, elf hats, silly glasses, Santa hats, a scarf, plastic candy canes, and gift boxes.  

The Photo Station was lots of fun and a great way to involve the parents.  They like to be silly too!

And of course, so do the teachers!  

Activity option #2 was the Snowball Toss station.

This is a simple game that's quick to prepare and lots of fun for the kids.  

The cups were styrofoam so it was easy to knock over the pyramid with the paper "snowballs." 

Our last activity was the Decorate a Christmas Tree station.  The props for this station were created for the preschool by my "crafty" little daughter, Sasha.

The tree and decorations were made out of felt fabric and then painted with acrylic paint.  

You'll notice the tree is hot pink. Not a traditional choice, but I think it works!  (Plus, I didn't have any green felt!)  

After we played some games, the big guy made a visit and handed out some bags of sparkly reindeer food.

Then it was present time!  One gift for the parents that the kids had made (view here) and a Scholastic book for each of the kids from us teachers.

The party was festive and fun and a great way to end the school year of 2013!

I hope you all had a great party day, too.  
Now it's time for a fantastic holiday and lots of time to rest and relax.

And eat chocolates.  

I have already worked through a box of chocolate coconut balls given to me by one of the parents.  YUM!  

Ah, the perks of being a teacher!

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It's a Preschool Christmas! Art, Games, and Gifts for Parents

Christmas is so much fun.  Especially at preschool!  And this week was no exception.

One of the things we have on our TO DO list every year is making a Christmas gift for the parents.  

This year we decided to make a magnet bar to hold artwork onto the fridge.

The materials for this project include:

• paint sticks donated from a local hardware store
• two round button magnets hot glued to the back
• two clothespins hot glued to the front

An inexpensive, yet practical gift!

Here is a picture of the kids painting the blank side of their paint stick.  

We decided not to make this gift look too "Christmasy" with red paint or sparkles so that it could be kept on the fridge throughout the year.

One of our other projects this week was making Christmas swags using some fir branches.

The children painted glue onto one side of the branch, then dipped it in a tray of sparkles and glitter.  The best part of doing this project was the reaction of the children when they first lifted their branch out of the sparkle pan and flipped it over.  

So many oooohs and aaaahs!

Some of the children also pressed on some cotton ball "snow" at the end.

To hang the swag, we attached two pipe cleaners twisted together (to look like candy cane stripes) and attached it to the branch at the top.  

Then we helped the kids add a bow to the front with some inexpensive ribbon.  (Sorry I don't have photos of some completely finished samples.  It was a busy day!)


Another project this week was creating stockings to hang over our classroom "fireplace."  

 We provided flyers with lots of images of different Christmas gifts that the children could cut out and glue onto their stocking.


We encouraged the children to pick out items not only for themselves, but for each member of their family.  A little "we" not "me" reminder!

After gluing on the pieces, the children decorated their stocking with cotton and stickers.

To spice up our playdough, we added some peppermint extract and some sparkles to the mix.  We thought it was important to bring the scent of Christmas into the classroom, too!

And then it was time to play in the snow!

As I mentioned at the start of the week, we had our first snowfall of the year on Monday. So, we decided to celebrate by having a big snowball fight.  Indoors!

A crazy idea?  Yes, crazy if it had been real snow. But what we used for the snowballs were crumpled paper balls.   They make the perfect snowball.  They're not wet, not icy, and most importantly, not painful when they hit you in the back!  (As noted by me - a wimpy snowball fighter.  Some of those real snowballs can feel like rocks!)

Here we are battling it out.  The children particularly enjoyed pelting the teachers!
But I got a few good shots in myself!

The snow falling from the ceiling unfortunately was not real.  I just thought it would be fun to set the scene through a little creative editing!  

And last, playtime in the snow would not be complete without makin' some snow angels. Here are our little snow angels!

And so caps another fun week at preschool...!  Fa la la la la...la la la la!

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Santa's Toy Shop in Preschool

Week 2 of our Countdown to Christmas is upon us!

And we even got a sprinkling of snow to help make our spirits bright!  

The snowfall wasn't enough to build a snowman, or really even much of a snowball, but you can't be picky when you live on the west coast!  Any bit of white gets celebrated at this time of year.

We already decorated our Chistmas tree as a class last week, but the children had so much fun with the process that we decided to bring in another smaller tree for decorating at center time.  

We placed the tree on a table along with an assortment of decorations.  We encouraged the kids to "undecorate the tree" when they had finished loading it up so that the next person could decorate it.  

To help encourage the undecorating process (which of course is never as fun as the decorating process), I placed a couple of toy cameras on the table so that the children could take a photo of their creation before they undid their handiwork.  

An annual tradition in our classroom at this time of year is to create a Santa's Workshop. Here we can see the elves busy at work creating toys for Santa!

We included a variety of props including elf hats; gift boxes with lids; toys to be "built;" building tools including toy hammers, drills, levels, screwdrivers, etc.; paintbrushes to pretend to paint the finished products, and more.  

After our gang of elves "built" some toys they would put them in the gift boxes and bags and either present them to children in the classroom, or place them temporarily under our class Christmas tree. 

This is the sort of play we usually see at the center, but the center is always open for new ideas.  

At one point the elves imagined a snow monster was coming to lay siege on the toyshop and steal all the presents.  Everything needed to be hidden, and fast!  

Not exactly what we had in mind, but definitely showing the preschoolers' imagination at work!   

At the station in the photo below we have the Gingerbread Man Count and Clip activity. 

The children count the buttons on the Gingerbread man's tummy and then clip the clothespin onto the corresponding number on the card. 

A great activity for counting practice, number recognition, and the development of fine motor skills.  

Today we put a few more touches on one of our Christmas Bulletin Boards.  Simple but festive.   

In case you're wondering, the trunk is made from brown tissue paper just crumpled lengthwise and stapled to the board.  So easy!  

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