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I’m a teacher – even during Christmas Break!
Each year I am grateful for the weeklong break after Christmas, and as most teachers will tell you, it is nearly impossible to go for the entire week without working on school work in some way, shape, or form. This year I am taking full advantage of the brand new Cricut that my little sister got for Christmas and the two of us teachers have planned a full day of classroom crafts. Here is what I will be working on – I promise to post what I am able to finish! (all ideas are linked on my Pinterest Preschool Board)
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Baking in the classroom
I love to bake with my kids. It involves so many different learning experiences – sharing, waiting your turn, measuring ingredients, chemical reactions, temperature, vocabulary, and it is something that makes everyone smile. We are fortunate enough to have a fully equipped kitchen at our center, and we often bake things in the oven, but for truly special days I like to keep the excitement in the classroom. The last two weeks we have been baking up a storm to prepare for the holidays. One of our favorite recipes so far has been reindeer cookies. These are super easy to make – we used pre-packaged cookie dough (it is easy…
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Counting candy canes
Here’s a great activity for number recognition and counting – my kids were actually arguing over who would get to do this activity next – that’s a great teacher moment! Use a tray with seperate compartments (ours is a veggie tray left over from a class party) and place a different number in each compertment. I taped the numbers down so that they wouldn’t move, and so they would be removeable, therefore I can change them when my kids have these particular number down. Then give the children different objects to count into the numbered compartments – at halloween we used candy corn, today we used candy canes. The miniature…
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Cute Cards!
If you are anything like me, your classroom has probably become consumed with projects having to do with Christmas; gifts for parents, fun activities for the kiddos, cards, ornaments, decorations, you know the drill. Typically we go all out on our parents gifts – handmade gift, handmade wrapping paper, and a card to go with it all. I’m always looking for new card ideas, because I have a tendency to make things more difficult than they need to be. This year I found a super easy idea that the children love: Thumbprint reindeer Here is a picture of the ornament that I was inspired by: And here is one of…
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Parent gifts for the holidays!
Every year I make it my personal goal to help the children create gifts that their parents will appreciate. I have a couple of requirements when I am looking for ideas; They must be attractive, hold up well so that they can be appreciated for years, be useful yet unique, and they should be related to what we have been working on as a class. For example, 2 years ago the children were engaged in a rock project, so we wanted to do something with rocks – we found small, decorative landscaping rocks, glued them to pendants and strung them on ribbons for a pretty necklace that mom would actually…
