Friday, January 2, 2015

Christmas for Preschoolers - Part 2

I chose to stretch the "Christmas week" onto two weeks. Hey, Christmas is exciting here and the kids love these seasonal activities so if your materials allow, don't hesitate. Needless to say, we still worked on our "abcs" and numbers but when it's adapted to the holidays, somehow, the trays are even more inviting.


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Sorting presents by size
Who would have thought the Pink tower could turn into such fun? My kids never cared much for the pink tower...until now that is. Seeing all these pink cubes sitting in a corner, I imagined them turning into presents so I followed my thought and prepared this activity as a size discrimination one. No stacking this time; only sizing from smallest to biggest...or vice versa!

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Drawing a Christmas tree with triangle inset
Well, this isn't new. I believe it's quite popular in Montessori schools actually. I proposed two different versions of the tree drawing using the triangle inset. My daughter opted for the "easiest". Thought she'd get around to doing the second one as well but she didn't.

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Spooning sparkly "ornaments"
Ooo. While any kind of pompom could be used for this work, my kids relished these for their sparkly factor. It made the activity SO much more interesting! :) Who knew spooning could be so much fun, right?

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Cards and chocolates!
Homeschool Creations' Gingerbread Baby pack had these cute cards perfect for the season. Couldn't resist. I tried finding Christmas clothespins but to no avail so I went to the next best thing: Christmas chocolates! Yummy!

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"Sandpaper Letters"
My kids like the regular Sandpaper letters but after seeing this idea on Pre-K+K Sharing, I thought it'd be a nice spin on them for the holidays. Once again, the Gingerbread Baby pack came in handy! Each letter we've learned so far was covered in glitter glue for tactile definition (not easy to do by the way!). As I printed them, I realized they were quite small. Will have to enlarge for next year but these still worked well overall since my child has mall fingers.

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Mystery Stocking
It was so hard for my daughter NOT to look into the stocking while feeling the objects! She loved this activity and guessed all of things right (I picked holiday related items and used my old childhood stocking). She enjoyed making her own for me afterwards! :)

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Visual Discrimination: Finding Letters
Thank you, thank you, thank you Katie @ The Gift of Curiosity. I'm always happy to drop by Katie's website. She provides so generously all kinds of printables including the ones pictured above. My little one LOVES do a dot paint and since she's still working on her first letters, this was perfect on so many levels!


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Matching colorful pompoms and Christmas lights
So basic for a preschooler. It took a whole 30 seconds for my daughter to do but it was still fun. Thanks to the Stir of Wonder for the idea!

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Cutting Strips
Free Santa! My daughter has been cutting for a good two years now but she still could use some practice. Straight lines and diagonal lines are quite easy for her but wavy lines and spirals? Not so much. She didn't really feel like giving this tray a shot until I presented it as a "freeing" activity. Santa was trapped in the snow maze and needed to be freed so he could deliver the presents. Her cutting along the spiral would do just that. Convinced, she proceeded to cut all her strips. In her defense...the strips were not exactly attractive. I had planned on buying shiny Christmas stickers but time got away from me and I had to use the stampers we had on hand. These did come in handy though when we tried to work on patterning later...

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Flipping Gingerbread Cookies
Hmm. Cookies. Amazingly enough, although I baked 5 different kinds of cookies this year, I did not make any gingerbread folks. Other than being cute, they don't do much for me taste-wise and I know it's the same for most everyone in the house so I skipped but still liked the idea of this cookie so I made a few out of felt! :) Perfect for flipping. My daughter loved flipping them and pretend she was baking and then decorating them. On another note, my felt wasn't the stiff kind so it was a tad bit hard when it came to flipping with the wooden spatula. Will be switching to better spatula and stiff felt or foam next year if we repeat.

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Decorate a tree with pompoms toothpicks
Now I've seen this idea somewhere and I usually write down where I find the inspiration from but didn't for this one I guess. Anyhow, basically, I used a shoebox, drew a Christmas tree and poked holes for future toothpicks to come into them. This worked as a 1:1 correspondence activity. There were enough holes for the pompom toothpicks provided.

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Matching sample of wrapping paper to roll
Cute activity here using wrapping paper remnants. I cut small squares and asked my daughter to match these samples to the roll she thought it came from. She really enjoyed it but it was quite easy. Next year, I'll be adding more samples and  possibly smaller ones! :)



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