Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Tot Christmas School

I'm trying to do more with the littles.  I find it really difficult to fit doing things with them into my day.  I'm busy with teaching the bigs, grading, cooking, cleaning, unpacking, etc.  In order to find more time, I've banned myself from Facebook and The Well-Trained Mind forums during school hours.  It's helping a little.

So, this week, I've been Googling "Preschool Christmas Crafts" or "Preschool ______________ Crafts" with the blank being filled in with the topic I want.  Topics I'm looking for are things like snowman, Christmas tree, snowflake, ornament, etc.  My goal is to do one a day with them.  They are really enjoying doing crafts with me.

Yesterday, we did a Christmas bear that I found at First-School Preschool Activities and Crafts.  They came out really cute.

Josh did his craft almost entirely on his own.  First I got out watercolor paper and told him to make a tree with no leaves.  Then I put some of the blue liquid watercolor in a bowl and really watered it down.  I gave him a large brush and told him to cover the entire page.  When he was done, I let him sprinkle salt on the still wet paint.  While we waited for it to dry, I cut out the bear pieces for him because he doesn't have the scissors skills to do that himself.  He used a glue stick to put the bear together.  Once the paint was dry, I showed him how to glue cotton balls for snow on the ground, his tree, and snow clouds.  Then I used a roll of masking tape to tape the bear on; this made it stick up from the page a bit.  I wrote "Ho, Ho, Ho" on the little tag, and he copied it in red marker.

Maddie followed the same procedure but had more help.  She did the painting and salt.  I applied glue to the bear pieces and she put them together.  For the snow, I unrolled the cotton balls and she placed them on the glue.    She really loved it.

Today's craft, from the same website, incorporated some math and letters. Yay!

Today I used blue construction paper and had the kids put cotton balls down for snow.  I cut out the tree and snowflakes.  The tree had squares with the numbers 1-10 on them.  Each snowflake was also numbered.  Josh was able to glue the snowflakes in place on his own.  Then he glued on the snowman.  I made a little pipe cleaner scarf, pipe cleaner nose, and paper hat for him to put on his snowman.  The eyes are plastic pony beads.  Then he decorated his tree with dots of glue covered in glitter (done very carefully on his own).  I placed the foam letters down on the paper, and he picked up each one, removed the backing, and stuck them back down one at a time.

Again, Maddie had more help with gluing but she placed each thing on the glue herself.  She was able to place the snowflakes by matching the letters.  I worked on number recognition by naming them for her.  Our conversation went like this:

Me: Ok, get another snowflake.
Maddie: Picks up a snowflake.
Me: Which number is that?
Madde: Eight.
Me: No, that's a five.  Where's the five on the tree?
Maddie: Points to the seven.
Me: No, that's a seven.  Where's the five?  Look at the snowflake; find the same number.
Maddie: Points to the five.
Me: Good, that's right! 

I apply glue and she sticks it on.  About half of them, she chose the correct number the first time and half of them she required two tries.  She opted to decorate her tree with stick on foam hearts, and she wanted glitter stars in her sky.

I've really been impressed with how careful Josh has been in doing his crafts.  Normally, he's loud and won't be still for anything.  The fact that he's doing such a careful job tells me that he really wants to do these crafts. I'll keep working on having more for him to do.

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