Puffy Snow

January...the month of snow and dark skies. Coming back to preschool after Christmas break was very exciting. We got lots of snow this winter so far and that was our theme the first week back...SNOW.

The preschoolers assembled snowmen by gluing circles on top of each other. There was a lot of embellishment with markers before we got to the really cool part...painting with "snow".

Snow Recipe: Equal portions of Elmer's glue and shaving cream, mixed thoroughly together till it looks like really thick Cool Whip. Then it's ready to paint with. I have the kids use Popsicle sticks as their median to move the snow around the paper. It has to dry overnight and it's a wonderful surprise!! It's 3-dimensional. It's like pushing onto sponge that doesn't come off the paper. The kids LOVE the results and they have so much fun feeling their finished artwork.

Christmas Ornaments

Ornaments. We had a day where there was only a handful of kids at preschool. And after we were done with all the planned activities, we found ourselves with some time to spare.

So we colored some nativity ornaments. (I only had 5 ornaments--perfect for only 5 kids :) Not everyone had put up there Christmas trees yet, but we talked about how ornaments hang on the beautiful branches. Christmas is about Love and creating that Love. And what better way to remember the reason for the season than a cute ornament.

Kites in Winter

You don't usually think about kites in the middle of winter, but we are already half way through the alphabet. When we got to letter K, we glued on little kites and drew the strings on. For letter M, we glued on mittens; N was numbers...and so on.

Cool Tools--Tweezers!!

I'm always looking for activities that are fun but also develop skills. I came across something last year that spurred a thought...tweezers. I saw a post that showed older kids working on fine motor skills by using magnifying glasses and tweezers. I thought that might be a little too complicated at this age, but each of those items, individually, would be a lot of fun.

Not too long after that, I was at Learning Is Fun, a home school/teacher supply store, here in Spokane, and came across a bucket of giant tweezers--12 count. What a fabulous little "tool" for eager learners. Preschoolers are constantly growing into new abilities and skills through their playing and activities. What I thought would be a lot of fun without them realizing that they were honing eye-hand coordination, was be to use the tweezers to sort and pick little objects up.

And what better little objects than a bucket of colorful pom poms. I dumped hundreds of poms across the table and gave everyone a pair of tweezers. It was the most productive "clean-up" session I've had in a long time.

Everyone was very excited to put the pom poms back into the containers and didn't leave a single one out!

Christmas Party

We made it to the end of the month too soon!! We missed two days due to the wintry weather conditions and slick roads. But we still had lots of things to make and get ready before our holiday break. Each of the kids painted little wood frames one day and then decorated them the next with markers and stickers. A picture of them was inserted to complete the gift. They decorated red gift bags and wrapped the frame to take home on the last day of class.



I had some wood wreaths that the kids colored with their markers. They glued colored pom poms to it to complete the festive look.

Not everybody stuck with traditional colors, but the thrill of creating and decorating was the same.

Dirty fingers are nothing new in preschool. Usually the markers don't bother them as much as the glues, though.

We had a little gift exchange. Everyone brought a gift that was wrapped. We put them in a pile and I drew their names to go and choose a gift from the pile. Even in the busy-ness of getting everything together--they were delighted with all the little games and toys.

And as in past years--we never forget the reindeer that pull Santa's sleigh--when we are getting ready for Christmas. The kids each assembled a bag of "Magic Reindeer Food" to sprinkle on the lawn before Santa came. Shhh...the ingredients are top secret, but might include: oatmeal, white sugar, and colored sugar crystals. We heard that reindeer love sugar and oats!

Trees and more Trees

Nothing is more symbolic of the Christmas season then the fir tree. And there are hundreds of ways to create a tree, even when you are only four. Today we made trees from chenille stems cut at different lengths and wrapped around a wood dowel. Then the preschoolers used pony beads to decorate the branches.

The group today really enjoyed creating patterns with the beads and lining them up on the boughs. Some are pleased with minimal beading, and others were not done until the tree looked like a rainbow of color!

But whatever the style, the trees reflected their interest and excitement for the season.

I have found that preschoolers have attention spans that reflect their age. If they are four years old, you can engage them and hold their interests for about 4 minutes. You get one more minute for every year they are older. So a lot of the crafts and activities I do with the kids are broken up and placed between other activities, so I can hold their attention longer. So even though they had already made a "tree" earlier in the day, they were not opposed to creating a geometric tree because it utilized different materials and skills.

Each of the kids had to find the correct shape on the grid and find the matching shape in the green pattern pieces. The goal was to create a tree. I was really surprised at how clean and precise some of the trees turned out. [Boys are not always noted for being "detail"-oriented at this age].

And even for being the youngest in the group at just 3 years old, Cooper's tree looks marvelous and he knows it!

It was a simple project, but the kids were learning concepts like shapes, order, piecing, fine motor skills, and eye-hand coordination. It resulted in another fine looking tree for the day.

Gingerbread Houses

December is always a crazy busy month for preschool. It's a week shorter because of the holiday break, and yet there are twice as many projects to do. But we packed in as many as we could with the snowy weather and flu bugs flying our way. One of my most favorite activities to do with my preschoolers this time of year, is to have a day that is dedicated to Gingerbread stories and decorating houses. It's is So MuCh FuN!!

Some of our little builders were quite extravagant and all inclusive with the building materials, while others were a bit more selective and exclusive. There were lots of colors and shapes to choose from and each house was a unique masterpiece.

I got the best tip a couple of years ago about making gingerbread houses a complete success with preschoolers....after most of the rooves collapsed...and that was a glue gun. Hot glue is the most valuable tool in a crafter's arsenal. It greatly improved the snowy roof lines and colorful decor for us. I've gotten wiser to how these little people work over the years. The mouth is their most used sensory tool. Somehow--everything goes there at some point during a project. So each of the kids got their own pot of frosting and knife to work with. And even with all the coaching about not sampling the goods until the houses were done...well. It tasted too good.