‘Tis The Season

Oh…I’m SO lovin’ all these fun little Christmas activities!  There’s just something about this time of year, don’tcha think?!  I’ve gotten SO many WONDERFUL ideas from blogland that I can’t wait to implement in my own room!  Y’all are too dang much!  Here are a few more things we worked on this week…

I was so inspired by Sarah Cooley’s Noun Town that we made one of our own, too!  Since it’s the holiday season, we decided to make a Gingerbread Noun Town.  We did some “city planning” before we got started.  We talked about people, places, and things that we might see in our town and brainstormed a list of each.  After city planning, I had each of the kids choose a different building to create {gingerbread style} using the list of buildings from our brainstorm chart {forgot to take pics!!}  I set out cotton balls, garage sale dots, construction paper, and other little materials for them to use.   They had to label their buildings as well!

We had a candy shop & a dentist’s office right next to each other…an airport…a toy store {of course!}…and they were adamant about including a school!  After we put our town together, I had the kids write a fiction story about their visit to Gingerbread Noun Town.  I told them that they had to start with a “hook” and tell me why they visited and what they did when they got there.  They LOVED it!  And it was so fun to read their stories…SO creative!  The kids illustrated their writing and then we assembled it into a Gingerbread house shaped book!  They’re still working on this part, so they aren’t quite finished yet ;)

You should check out Babbling Abby if you haven’t already.  She has some DARLING Gingerbread activities and downloads posted on her blog!!

 

Speaking of Gingerbread, the holiday season just wouldn’t be complete without some kind of peppermint or candy cane activity.  I can take NO credit for this idea…one of the teachers on my team has been doing this for years!  And I think it’s PRECIOUS!  We’ve been learning about doubles math facts, so we gave the kids two small paper plates and had them create peppermints using the backside of the plates. In the white part of the peppermints, the kids wrote their own doubles facts.  We stapled the plates together, put them inside a little food baggie, and gathered the edges & tied them with yarn.  I hung mine on my window, but some of the other teachers hung them from their ceilings.  SO fun!