Reindeer

Today we talked about reindeer.  My son named his hand print reindeer "Cutie" and "Goodie".  Be sure to check out www.reindeercam.com to see live footage of some reindeer and Santa stops by sometimes as well.

I know my posts this season haven't been overly interesting, but around Christmas time we pretty much do the same things each year so to keep my focus on the activities and not blogging so much I will give links for my previous posts.  :)

2013

2012

2011

Candy Canes

Today we talked about candy canes.  My son was really excited about this topic!

He enjoyed hanging some on our Christmas Tree.

He also enjoyed painting a candy cane green and red.

I didn't take pictures of the rest of our candy cane activities, but you can look at previous posts for the activities and links to them.

2013

2012

2011

2010

Book of Mormon Christmas Preschool Theme

We are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  One thing that I like to do at Christmas time is talk about what happened in the Book of Mormon leading up to and when Christ was born.  We spent a little time doing that today.  There are not tons of resources out there, but what is out there is really worth using.

 Beyond Bethlehem:  A Book of Mormon Christmas by David Bowman is an awesome book that tells about Samuel the Lamanite and Nephi praying for a sign of Christ's birth right before Jesus is born.  The illustrations are fun and the book help explains what is going on in the Book of Mormon in the perfect way to keep kids interested.

I also tried to get my son to act out the story of Samuel the Lamanite by climbing onto our piano bench and I threw marshmallows at him (instead of rocks and arrows).  I took a turn being Samuel the Lamanite too.  Confessions of a Slacker Mom has an entire printable pack about Samuel the Lamanite.

Chocolate on My Cranium also has a great FHE lesson devoted to Christmas in the Book of Mormon.

There is also an article from a Friend Magazine in 1985 that is perfect for this topic.

You can also see what I did in 2011 with my middle son.

Merry Christmas!  We will be taking a break from preschool until the beginning of the year.

Nativity Preschool Activities

Today we talked about we had a Nativity Preschool theme.  My son wanted me to write Baby Jesus instead of Nativity on the picture here.  :) 

There are tons of activities and ideas out there for this theme as it should be since Christmas is all about the birth of Jesus Christ.  We love our Little People Nativity Set.  It is set up on top of our computer desk, but we got it down and played with it.  My son likes to hide and find things so we did that with baby Jesus.  Check out this fun Nativity Scavenger Hunt using the Little People set.

There are tons of preschool printables out there about the Nativity, Jesus, Angels, and so forth.  I love having lots of options and usually use a few things from lots of sources.  I will put up some links to some favorites.

3 Dinosaurs Nativity Pack

Nativity Prek-K Pack (free for a limited time)

Confessions of a Homeschooler's Letter J is for Jesus Pack

Over the Big Moon's Nativity Pre-K Pack

1+1=1 Nativity Printables

City Teacher Goes Country's Nativity Thematic Unit

2 Teaching Mommies The Nativity Pack

Prepared Not Scared has a fun Memory Game.  Here is a cute printable UNO game.

We have used this play in the passed.  I think we will do a little bit different one using these stick puppets on Christmas Eve to help tell the story of Christ's birth.

Here are some links to coloring pages.

Making Learning Fun color by number

Xmas Coloring Pages

Check out this link to the Ultimate List of Nativty Resources.

Here is what we did in 2010 and 2011.

We also enjoyed watching some Christmas Videos like the ones found here. We also love The Piano Guys "O Come, Emmanuel" video.

We also sang some favorite Christmas songs out of the Children's Songbook.

The last thing we did was make a baby Jesus Christmas Ornament to hang on the tree.  My son had a great time cutting pieces of yellow paper to use as the straw in the manager.

Then he hung it on our tree.

I may post tomorrow and I may not.  I have a lot going on in the next week and a half so we will see.  If I don't I wish you all a Merry Christmas!

The Polar Express

The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg is a wonderful holiday book!  We do not own it unfortunately, but I let my son listen to it on a youtube video.

 

3 Dinosaurs has an awesome preschool pack just for The Polar Express.

My son likes to do the number puzzles and then count the numbers once the puzzle is put together.

I made a train track with masking tape on our kitchen floor and my son had a blast pretending to be a train.

I also gave him a ticket so he could "ride" the train and give me his ticket to watch the movie.

Drinking some hot chocolate while you watch the movie is also a fun thing to do!  

You can check out what we did in 2011.

The Polar Express also has an official website with activities and recipes.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas Preschool Theme

Today we read "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" by Dr. Seuss.

After we read the book we did a few Grinchy activities.

Find some coloring pages here.

The maze shown above and other activities here.

This is a freebie for a little bit older than my guy, but looks fun here.

Naturally my son wanted to paint his Grinch.

Then I cut it out for him.

We made Grinch Crinkle Cookies. My son enjoyed helping.  He put the cookie dough in the powdered sugar and thought that was great fun.

You can find the recipe here.  There is also another more minty cookie recipe here. 

My cookies don't look very green because I was really low on green food coloring.

We also watched the cartoon of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas".  After that we took turns hiding the Grinch around the house and having the other person find him.

You can also check out my posts from 2012 and 2011 for more Grinch related activities!

Reindeer Preschool Theme

We have been taking turns being sick at our house and I guess it is my turn now.  Thankfully all of the reindeer things I have were already on hand so I just had to pull them out and let my son have fun.

First off you can check out the Reindeer Cam to see what some reindeer are doing right now.  

This Christmas Pack has a fun reindeer color matching game.

The Virtual Vine has a lot of fun reindeer activities including a flannel board story I like to use about Rudolph's nose.

This Reindeer Pack is where most of my activities came from.  It has a fun little story and all kinds of reindeer activities for preschoolers.

My boys had such fun making little paper plate reindeer masks last year that I helped my son make another one this year.  He decided to have an orange nose (mostly because I didn't have any red pom-poms)

We watched Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and sang the song.  My son kept his nose on while he watched the movie.

Bear Stays Up for Christmas

Today we read "Bear Stays Up for Christmas" by Karma Wilson.

 I had some things to take care of this morning so we had a small preschool day.  We enjoy reading this book though so it was a perfect day for it.  Check out the story props pictured here. I let my son put up the pictures of each thing as he saw them in the book while I was reading.  After we finished the book I laid out the names of each thing and he matched those with the pictures.  He can recognize what things sound like and was able to figure out almost all of them completely on his own.  For example he knows that bear starts with the letter B so he looked for words that started with B.  There were two so then I guided him from there.  The only one that really tricked him was the word wren.

 Karma Wilson has a website with lots of things on it for teachers, parents, and children with all of her books.  I found this bear mask on her site.

Here is a link to several activities that go with the book if you want to spend more time on it.

If you are looking for some activities geared towards a little bit older child you can see what I did last year with my (at the time) five year old.

Santa Claus Preschool Theme

Today we did some Santa Claus activities!

We read our favorite books about Santa Claus "The Night Before Christmas" illustrated by Mary Engelbreit and "I Believe in Santa Claus" by Diane Adamson. The first is a classic story of Santa Claus with really fun illustrations.  The second one is a comparison of Santa Claus and Jesus Christ and symbols of Christmas.  We reread both lots throughout the Christmas season.

 We sang "Up on the Housetop" and "Santa Claus is Coming to Town".

There are lots of preschool Christmas packs out there with little things that have to do with Santa.  I enjoy this Santa sizing activity from Little Piles Everywhere.

I found some real cute and fun puzzles that were targeted right for my son here. 

We also did this Santa Claus paper plate craft.  You can see more about it in my 2011 post about Santa Claus activities.  This post is actually my second most viewed post of all time.We did use white construction paper instead of copy paper and I think it worked better. Doesn't he make a cute Santa?

 The number one activity that all my kids look forward to each year is receiving a personalized e-mail from Santa Claus from Portable North Pole.  I can't say enough good things about it.  My kids have fun watching them over and over again each year.

Here is what we did in 2010 for our Santa Claus theme and in 2012.  I don't vary too much year to year with this theme because what I have already works so well, but it does change a little depending on how old my kids are that I am working with.

Christmas Trees

Today was supposed to be our big Christmas Tree day however, my little guy was not feeling well all day.  We did some activities here and there, but not all the ones I had planned.  He just didn't feel up to it.  Hopefully on Monday he will feel all better and we can do some more.  I figured I would go ahead and post all the ideas that we have or will use though.

 There are many Christmas Printable Packs geared to preschoolers out there and many of them have lots of fun tree activities.

One of my favorite activities is this file folder matching game.

Here are some of the packs that I have printed off activities from to use:

2 Teaching Mommies Christmas Trees Pack
Merry Christmas Pack
Christmas Theme Activity Package
Christmas Preschool Printables
Winter Wonderland Pack

I have felt Christmas Trees with little felt pieces to decorate the tree on a flannel board.  If you need a tree template check out this page.

I made these lacing cards a long time ago and I am so glad I did because it is always a favorite when I pull them out.  It is an ornament and a tree.

This is also another little thing I made with scrapbook paper and old cereal boxes.  The child can put the shapes together to make trees.

We made a Christmas Tree using letters of his name.

I did get my son to do a little art project.  He used a fork to paint this Christmas Tree.  He didn't have any desire to decorate the tree up at all, but with the situation being what it was I was just happy he perked up enough to do it for a little bit. I found this idea here.

There are lots of fun Christmas Tree art projects out there.  Here are some more of my favorites:

Hand print Christmas Tree

Christmas Tree Shapes

Spiral Tree

Paper Strip Tree

Torn Paper Christmas Tree

You can also check out our Christmas Tree themes from previous years 2012,2011, 2010, and 2009.

Candy Cane Preschool Theme

Today we talked about candy canes!  I have to remind myself (especially this time of the year) that we don't have to do every cute and fun idea that I come across.  There are just too many!

 I cute out some felt in the shape of a candy cane and some stripes so that my son could make his own using felt.  He enjoys being able to play with things on the flannel board.

 We also made shapes out of candy canes.  He wanted to make sure we had one that looked like a J. This idea came from Teach Preschool.

 I really like to read this mini book about candy canes because it helps young children understand why candy canes are seen around Christmas time at their level.

 Here is a fun candy cane matching game.  It gets a little tricky since some of the patterns are quite similar.

 I forgot to take a picture of this, but check out this link for a fun file folder candy cane/stocking matching game.

This printable pack has  a lot of Christmas activities including the stocking and candy cane counting game.

2 Teaching Mommies has a fun Candy Cane Pack to check out including this number puzzle.

 Our Little Monkey's also has a real cute candy cane pack including these writing practice sheets.

 

 Confessions of a Homeschooler has a Christmas Activity pack that includes counting these candy canes.

 My son had fun painting a candy cane red and yellow.  We talked about patterns and how you can find different patterns on different flavors of candy canes.

 Of course, we needed to taste test the different flavors of candy canes that we had!

 We put a candy cane in warm water and found out the red stripes disappear!  Teach Preschool is where I found this idea.  My son was fascinated by this.

 I painted my son's hand and we made a hand print candy cane. He got a kick out of that.

 Here are all the different flavors of candy canes we put up on our tree.  Of course, we took some broken ones so we could melt them a little and bend them into shapes.

 To melt candy canes I put them into the oven at 250 degrees for about 5 minutes.  The time will vary so you just have to watch.  Here are some instructions.  The candy canes are really too hot for little ones to touch when they are the most bendable, but my son enjoyed watching me bend and make letters and shapes.

 Here is a little foam candy cane.  It is the same idea as the felt candy canes, but using foam.

You can check out our 2012, 2011, and 2010 posts to see what we have done in the past!