You may be asking yourself “Why in the world is Diane reminding us about a giveaway that ended last night at midnight?” Well, here’s the honest truth. I thought the “‘How-Do-You Do-It?’ December Giveaway” ended tonight at midnight, not last night! As a matter of fact, today’s blog was to be a reminder about the giveaway. Good grief!
But here’s the good news: the giveaway deadline has been extended! This means if you’d like to get in on the giveaway, you still can. In fact you can comment right up until midnight tonight (December 7). And even if you won’t be commenting, I encourage you to check out the tips your teaching colleagues have shared. Awesome stuff!
Your occasionally flaky blog host,
Diane
Congratulations to Melissa Lee! She’s the winner of our giveaway!
Each year, the students make a handprint calendar and an ornament for their parents gift. My Kindergarten class partners with a 2nd grade class during the year for reading. So for Christmas, we get together and make Christmas trees (using sugar cones, icing, and sprinkles) and then the second day we wear pajamas, watch Polar Express, and drink hot chocolate. The kids love it!!!
My students love talking about Santa so I try to work skills into the Christmas theme. Today, we are
doing sequencing with an activity to dress Santa in the proper order. I am pointing out things to watch for when trying to decide. Then we are making a reindeer (hand) ornament for our tree. As I give instructions, we are talking about the proper sequence.
I just love this month!! So many things to do and just NOT enough time!
I teach first grade and we do Holidays Around the World. The children receive a “passport” with the different countries we are going to visit. Once we have arrived at our destination we stamp the passport and learn about the holiday customs in that country. Students will write any information they learned in their passport and do some sort of craft activity to go along with the country we are in. We usually visit one country a day and the kids can’t wait to see where we are off to next!
Our preschool special needs classes are doing a variety of activities in December. “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”, “Up on the Rooftop”, “Rudolph” and “Must be Santa” are sung using motions and pictures to keep everyone actively involved. Art projects products provide several parent gifts and have a seasonal theme. The Gingerbread Man begins December and The Polar Express (including drinking hot chocolate) concludes the holiday season.
We start with Gingerbread Man, we then do a Holiday theme: Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Christmas, Reindeer, Santa.
We sing songs and practice for a concert for our families. We usually sing about 6 songs and then have snack.
We have been reading a lot of different stoires about Christmas, Santa, Cookies, Reindeers, gingerbread man. We paint our ornaments for their Christmas trees at home. Their favorite book so far is the “Cookie Count.” They loved all the different ytpes of cookies in the book. The gingerbread house is awesome for the kids to look at.
Then one little boy said Ms. Vicki we need a gignerbread house for our cookies. So this last weekend I went to get a big box from the uhaul store. I traced out the candy canes, windows and etc. Cut out the different pieces to goon our gingerbread house. The children colored the box brown and had to figuire out where the cut out pieces went. They had a blast. Each child painted their parents a picture on canvas board this year.
‘Tis the season for brain overload, causing shortcircuting of memory!
As many preschools do, we have children from all around the globe: India, Israel, China, France, the Netherlands, etc. We celebrate the “season of lights” and talk about different holidays from around the world- Diwali, Channukah, Santa Lucia, St. Nikolas day, etc. The kids learn songs about the holiday, do a craft to take home or decorate the classroom, and talk about the customs that relate to the celebration. Many times we have a parent come in and do a circle about the holiday their family celebrates–they bring in pictures, samples of special foods, and stories of traditions. The children love it when their mom or dad come in to do a special circle.
Dont forget with polar express to give each child a small silver bell after yiou read the story my three and fours believe its straight from santas sleigh, Also today we went to a local bakery and got to ice gingerbread men and tour the holiday treats.
I teach 1st grade at a Lutheran School so we have a big all school musical. This years musical is called “It All Happened In The Country”. We will be busy next week practicing as a whole school (PK-8) to put on two evening performances. On the last day of school before Christmas break, the 1st graders have a Jesus Birthday Party. We celebrate with activities that kids may do at a birthday party. We play birthday party games, eat a birthday cake and open presents for the class. It is a wonderful way to celebrate Jesus’ birth! Blessings to all this Christmas!
I teach VPK and we had our Christmas program last night. We sang Away in a Manger and Do You Hear What I Hear.Now that is over we can start on the fun stuff. The Elves and the Shoemaker helps us with Kindness and we make a kindness quilt. Then it’s all about Christmas. We make reindeer,Santas and candy canes. For the parents we make applesauce and cinnamon ornaments. Boy does the room smell good.
I teach in a Catholic school, so we spend a lot of time doing Advent and Christmas activities. I try to incorporate them into the regular routines so that students don’t get too crazy but we still have something special. The last week before Christmas is pretty much devoted to special activities.
I teach first grade and for our holiday party we read the book and watch Polar Express and eat popcorn and drink hot chocolate.We then compare and contrast the book with the movie.
I teach 2 and 3 year old preschoolers. For the month of December we started with practicing a Christmas Play. The children will be performing “Christmas Bells” learning 1 to 10. And “His name is Santa” learning the color red and black. During this time we began learing about the change of weather. They will be making a Winter Wonderland Picture with black construction paper and a white crayon. We will also began our Christmas reading in which the children will bring their favorite book and than do a art project related to the book. On Fridays its a baking and cooking projects. And also a pj day.
Elizabeth
I hide a little elf in the classroom every school day in December. The students are instructed to keep it very quiet if they have found him until I ask at the end of the day, “Who found the elf?” If they are they only one to know where he is…they get a special treat. This way I hope they don’t tell each other or ruin the fun for someone else. Once in a while, the elf goes unnoticed by everyone!!! It’s fun to watch them hide their “expression of discovery” at by so no one else notices!! Hmmm..where will hide him tomorrow???