We started our Christmas theme with one of my favourite Christmas time goodies: Gingerbread Men! We read "The Gingerbread Man" and the kids had fun helping me read the story by remembering the repetitive phrases it has. We decorated our own foam gingerbread man to take home and coloured a gingerbread man to keep in the classroom. A special fairy was supposed to come to make our foam gingerbread men come alive, but I think she forgot as none of our gingerbread men started running around the room. We talked about some of the things we would do with our gingerbread man if the fairy came to Preschool. Of course, my Monday/Wednesday kiddos said their gingerbread man would help fight off bad guys. We went on a gingerbread man hunt, and had a tough time finding our gingerbread man, he just kept moving!
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We made our very own candy canes to take home to put on our Christmas tree using beads and a pipe cleaner. Some made patterns with their beads, while others just worked on developing the fine motor skills of getting the beads on the pipe cleaner. We played with candy cane felt busy bags, and counted how many stripes we put on our candy canes. Then, we went on a candy cane hunt and counted how many candy canes we found. After we found all the candy canes we used the candy canes to make different shapes that were drawn on the board. We also put a candy cane in water, and guessed what we thought was going to happen to it. It took a long time, but eventually the candy cane dissolved into the water, and made the water pink!
We talked about snowmen next! Snow magically appeared in our Sensory Centre, and we had fun playing in it with sand toys. The Monday/Wednesday kiddos added food colouring right into the snow in the Sensory Centre, and got pretty messy! So for the next time, we put on our painting shirts and had snow in individual containers and used a popsicle stick to stir in the food colouring. It was a lot less messy, and allowed for more individual discovery! We read "All You Need For a Snowman", and talked about how much fun building snowmen can be. We made marshmallow snowmen using marshmallows dipped in white paint. Some of our snowmen had lots of marshmallows on them, some didn't have a whole lot! We played with snowman shooters made out of foam cups and a balloon, and tried to shoot white pom poms into a bucket. Unfortunately we broke them before I could get any pictures, as the foam cups didn't stand up to the preschoolers very well! Next we guessed melted snow! First we melted snow with warm water, and guessed whether the warm water would melt the snow fast, slow, or not at all. Then we melted snow with cold water and guessed what would happen and compared it to melting snow with the warm water. Next we used salt, then cold water with lots of salt in it. Pouring plain salt onto the snow didn't have an immediate effect like the water did, but I'm sure if we had waited the salt would have melted the snow.
Next we talked about Christmas trees. We decorated ornaments to take home to add to our own Christmas trees. The kidlets decorated mini Christmas trees with buttons, used glitter glue on stars, and painted clear balls. They had a lot of fun using the glitter glue! Some had some difficulty squeezing the pens, but they still liked seeing the sparkles on their stars. Wrapping paper, scissors, tape and bows were added to the block centre for the kiddos to practise wrapping up blocks. Some had a try at it, but others were more interested in adding the ones I did up into their pretend play. We worked on our math skill by counting out pom poms to add onto Christmas trees.
We read "The Night Before Christmas" and talked about Christmas traditions at home. We laced stockings and then decorated them to hang up at home. We worked on cutting skills by cutting wrapping paper and gluing the pieces onto construction paper. We also played a guessing game with paper bags filled with Christmas things. At first the kiddos were a bit unsure, as they remembered back to our Halloween guessing game. But after convincing them that there was nothing gross in the bags, they thought they would give it a try.
Finally the big day came for our Christmas Party! We practiced our writing by addressing some Christmas cards. Then we decorated our cards with stickers. We sung our favourite Christmas songs while banging tambourines, and created a whole lot of noise! We watched the original "How the Grinch Stole Christmas", and ate popcorn. After, we played pass the present. The kidlets had lots of fun anticipating the music to stop hoping it would be their turn to unwrap a layer from the present. Once we unwrapped all the layers we found game cards for Christmas Bingo.
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