Third week of December 2011

Hello Everyone!
Posting a little late... but wanted to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas.  Things have been very much off due to Christmas and will remain that way until next year.  So I hope everyone has a very Happy New Year too!

We had a lot of things to get done during our third week of Christmas... like our handprint calendar.  I love these calendars and when I made them many years ago my parents just loved them.  This year I used the template from Jean at 123Learn Curriculum and the handprint ideas from Little Giraffes.

I used my laminator and my binding machine to make these calendars.  This is just a sample of one (sorry about the glare)...

We also did our annual (very small) Christmas Party.  For our party I typically buy big gifts that stay here at the daycare and I give them a small something to take home.  Here we are opening our presents.

 Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season.
Best,
Rose

Patterning Practice ~a Christmas Patterning Printable

You can download it here.
Best,
Rose

The Snowman Needs Buttons

I made another printable that has children counting buttons according to the number indicated on the hat.

You can download this printable here.

Enjoy,
Rose

Second Week of December

Hello Everyone!  I'm glad to say that I have been done with most of my Christmas "to do list" for almost a week now.  So the stress level that could be there is reading "low" currently.  That is such a good feeling... let's see how next week goes.

Can I tell you how excited the children are for Christmas!?!  These last two weeks before the "big event" are the hardest on all that are working with young children.  My plan is keeping them busy with a lot of projects, games, etc... so that all that excitement doesn't come spilling over.  Well... at least I thought I was keeping them busy but it just doesn't look like it from this week's "wrap up" of what we've done.  The only bonus is most of the things we did seemed to take them a very long time to tackle and with getting outdoors a few days, going down to the basement (a treat for them), and playing games, playdough, and all that fun... I guess we did stay pretty busy.

We did start our "Letter Kk Book" this week but we didn't get it finished... so I will post it next week.

We did, however, complete several Christmas projects this week.
From an idea found on Pinterest we tore green construction paper to make our own Christmas trees. 

We painted paper plates to make reindeers from Danielle's Place.  We only used one plate and didn't make it a card holder... just a reindeer.

We also made these lovely Christmas trees from Danielle's Place by painting an empty toilet paper tube brown and then using glue to put cones with the edges cut one on top of the other.  We goofed up a bit as I didn't try one prior to doing it and you need to put the ornaments on the edges of the cones or they won't show up... stickers might work better to be applied after the tree is done.  All and all, I was very happy with how they turned out.

These trees from Danielle's Place also turned out very cute.  We used a foam bead star and a pipe cleaner and then strung beads onto the pipe cleaner to make this simple tree.

We started our gifts... handprint calendars.  I can't show them here but what fun we had!!!

And lastly we talked about St. Lucia day and made an evergreen crown.  We used a paper plate, tissue paper, and printed candles.  Role playing is always fun when we discuss this day and I only wish we would have also made star boy hats, as the boys would have preferred that. 

First Week in December 2011

We are back!!!  My vacation was busy... yet, my "to do" list hardly got touched.  I really don't like when that happens because now I am stressing about how I am going to get it all done.  Ugh!!!  Any how... daycare is back in a normal routine and we accomplished pretty much this past week.  Here is what we did...

I introduced the letter Jj this week and we completed the following letter book.  Here are the pictures of it and here is a link where you can download the pages I made.

 The cover is a jar of jam and we colored the jar and the letter Jj's.

 On the left we put together 3-piece puzzles of the upper and lowercase Jj's and we colored

the part of the jingle bell that had the letter Jj in them.  On the right we used the book "Get

Set for the Code" and found the one that was different on the top and we did a pre-writing

activity on the bottom.

 On the left we used "Get Set for the Code" and we used clues to find the Jj picture the clue

was talking about and then I changed up the directions trying to make them at least two step directions.  We also traced letter Jj's.  On the right we searched for letter Jj's in this Letter Hunt

paper from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

 On the left we drew lines from the "j" to the pictures that start with the /j/ sound which we

got from "Getting Set for the Code" and we traced letter Jj's.  On the right we colored pictures

that started with the /j/ sound in each row which we got from "Getting Set for the Code" and we colored pictures and wrote the letter j for allthe pictures that began with the /j/ sound.

 On the left we wrote "j" for all the pictures that began with the /j/ sound and we traced/printed letter Jj's.  On the right we circled the letter that each picture began with.

 On the left we circled the letter each picture began with and traced/printed letter Jj's.  On the right we

used a page from the first "Explode the Code" book in which we reviewed the "at" family of words.

Christmas Theme
We reviewed the square shape and made a train out of squares and then made them into Christmas trains. 

We talked about Christmas in Sweden and how they were the first to bring Evergreen trees into their homes.  We used dot markers to color the tree and decorated a Christmas tree to go along with what we talked about.  It was fun to watch them decorate these trees as it was quite a project to find the perfect spangles ornaments to put on the trees.

We did a six piece Santa puzzle from Ruth at "A Child's Place" but I'm not sure where she is sharing this.

We also did a number sequence puzzle from 11- 20 from 2 Teaching Mommies.

We made paper plate Santa's from "My Shae Noel ~All things wonderful".

We did a hidden Christmas things page.  Sorry can't tell you where I got this... it was in my files.

We talked about "The King's Day" in Thailand and made crowns as part of our winter holidays unit.

We discussed Hanukkah, made menorah's and completed a hidden picture paper on Hanukkah symbols that we learned about.  We also sang a dreidel song and spun around like dreidels.

We made paper plate Christmas wreaths.  We painted the plate green (it already had the center cut out), I punched holes once they were dry and they laced with red yarn around the outside of the plate, they made glue dots (practicing our control with a glue bottle) and I glittered the glue dots.

 We made presents for somebody we love... dictated responses with lovely illustrations.

We made silver bells by taking a three bells printed on cardstock and cut out, glued them onto aluminum foil, glued the top of the bell and folded over the aluminum foil and rubbed so we could cut them out again.  We then decorated with glitter glue (again practicing our control) and we strung them together with red yarn to hang from our ceiling.

And lastly, we did a dot-to-dot picture of a present in which they illustrated something they would like to get for Christmas and dictated what it was.

Ok... I'm tired... but there is more...

We did a visual discrimination page in which we finished the picture and then colored the picture.

We measured... a skill they are just starting to do well with.

And we talked about feelings.  We did a happy/sad feeling game with the faces on a popsicle stick.  We read "Sammy the Snowman" (sorry not sure where this came from) but as you read you decide how Sammy felt and put the face that corresponds with that feeling onto the page, and then we did our own feeling books.

And that was our week.  Hope you enjoyed seeing what we did.

Best,

Rose