Candy Canes

Today we had a candy cane theme.  It's always a lot of fun and a great opportunity to talk about patterns.

I made this cute file folder color matching game a while back that is fun although too easy for my 5 year old at this time, but we still did it.

 This is a fun number recognition game.  You put a number up and have your child put that many candy canes "in" the stocking.

 Confessions of a Homeschooler has a fun Christmas Preschool pack that includes this candy cane counting activity.

 I like to use this Candy Cane mini book to explain different things that a candy cane symbolizes.

 My son loves to paint so he painted a candy cane.  My two year old also had fun painting one for himself as well.

After they dried we cut them out.  I am not sure why my 5 year old picked orange and green, but there you go.  My 2 year old was a bit more festive with red and green.

We taste tested a bunch of different flavors of candy canes.  I didn't realize how many different flavors are out there now a days.  We found Swedish fish flavored, Jolly Rancher, Bright Crawlers, and a whole lot more.  In the end with all the varieties my son said peppermint was his favorite.  :) 

 This is a real fun activity, but preschoolers still need a lot of help with that.  You cook candy canes and then you can bend them into different shapes.  They still need to be warm or they will break.  You can stick them back in the oven though and they will go back to being bendable.  My son did some different shapes and I wrote out some names.  The directions I followed are found at Make and Takes.  Her directions say 10 minutes however when I did it last year 10 minutes melted my batch completely. 5 minutes worked much better for me.  It's just going to depend on your oven so beware.

 My son also made a beaded candy cane that we hung on the tree.  This time he did green and yellow.  You just need pipe cleaner and beads for this activity.

2 Teaching Mommies has a fun Candy Cane pack
They also have a candy cane coloring and counting book
Here is a matching game we do that I didn't take a picture of.
We also did a candy cane coloring page from this coloring pack
And a dot-to-dot found here.

You can also check out our candy cane themed day from 2011 here and from 2010 here.