I know I might have said this before, but Christmas is my FAVORITE time of the year!! Here are a few of the things I love doing during this time of year in our classroom.
This Fireplace
This cardboard fireplace was passed down to me from one of my favorite coworkers before she retired. I have no idea how old it is, but I'm just glad it still holds up year after year! I love the ambiance it adds to our room!
Decorate the Tree Center
As one of our Christmas-themed centers, students get to decorate a small tree, and they always love decorating it over and over again. I also added in some sight word ornaments to get in a little more practice!
Felt Candy Cane Mice
My mom gave me the pattern for these adorable mice many years ago, and I've been making them for my students ever since.
Christmas Tree Counting Cards
We've been working on number recognition, counting, and one-to-one correspondence with our Christmas Tree Counting Cards. (You can grab these in my TpT store.) Students can use mini erasers, beads, pom poms, buttons, or any other small manipulatives to place on the trees.
Gingerbread Men (or Women) Ornaments
Each year we make these gingerbread men ornaments as part of our parent gifts. I, or a lovely assistant, cuts the gingerbread man shapes out of poster board. If we have brown poster board we'll use that, but if not, we use white and the students color them brown. Then they add googly eyes, beans, and ric rac for all the details.
Christmas Themed Pictures for the Light Table
This year, I added some themed pictures to my Light Table Activities Packet. These are a couple of the Christmas themed pictures that I added. The students use the glass stones to fill in the pictures.
Christmas Lightbulb Letters
The kiddos have been having so much fun putting the alphabet in order with these lightbulbs! They can also make sight words or spell their names.
I hung some green yarn on the whiteboard to act like the wire for the lightbulbs and each lightbulb has a magnet on the back so it will stick to the whiteboard. If you don't have a magnetic board, you can always hang some yarn or string anywhere else and use small clothespins to clip the lightbulbs to it.
(These Christmas Lights have received an update and can be found in my Teachers Pay Teachers store.)
Christmas Sensory Tub
Each month I add a new sensory tub to our Fine Motor Center. So of course this month's tub has a Christmas theme! (I have these tubs in the fine motor center because I always add tweezers, tongs, and scoopers to manipulate the items.) I also have these Alphabet Christmas Trees in there so students can match upper and lowercase letters, spell out words, etc.