My computer was having some technical difficulties, so I wasn't able to post anything for a while. Luckily, Christmas came, and my amazing hubby got us a new laptop. So now all is well:)
For the holidays this year, I wanted to set up Christmas-inspired activities for Cameron's classroom. I hadn't done a Christmas theme before, and Cam really had a great time playing with them. He's 2.5 now, and starting to get some understanding of Santa and Christmas and all that fun stuff. He kept saying, "Santa is going to bring me lots of presents!" Also, my MIL has a big Santa in her front yard, and Cam would go up to it and say, "Santa, are you coming to town?" :)
I am embarrassed to admit it has taken me this long to finally put an Open and Close activity out!!! This isn't the best example of a Christmas work, but I did put little red and green pom-poms in the containers. Mari Ann on Counting Coconuts always puts little treasures in her open/close works, so I thought I would try it, too:)
Here is a sticker and stamping activity that he really had fun with. It's all from the dollar store, so it's not the best quality, but I'm ok with that. He was really able to pull off and apply the large, glittery present stickers without any help. He still needed me to pull off the smaller foam ones, but I'm still proud of him:)
I was running out of shelf space, so this is two-works-in-one, lol. The top pieces are just a 6 part puzzle printable that I found online and glued to thick cardstock. I think the printables all came from Pre-Kinders. The candy cane is a threading activity... and his favorite! He has not been into threading at all, and I introduced them at like, 20 months. The shoelace came from and Melissa and Doug bead threading kit. He calls it his Lucky Lasso. We have no idea why:)
Card-making basket! I wanted to do homemade Christmas cards this year... mainly because I was too late to do the photo ones. So here are some stickers from HL and the dollar store, some markers, and a pack of plain cards and envelopes. He had a great time with this! I later found some Christmas stamps for 40% off at Michael's, and we played with those, too.
Whenever we do any kind of matching or pairing or anything like that, Cam has to be able to 'stick' the object to where it goes. He can't just set the counter on top of the paper or whatever, it has to click or stick. So I magnetize everything:) And it's getting old (and pricey) so I thought I would give my Velcro stickers a chance. This is another printable from Pre-Kinders, but instead of Do-A-Dots or magnets, I put Velcro on the dots and the pom-poms. It went over ok, but it wasn't one he re-visited very much. But it was fun to make:)
Tonging! I found these cute erasers from the dollar store, and set them out with those learning chopsticks/tongs for added difficulty. I wanted to put them into a different container, but they fit perfectly in the muffin tin. He did great with these, the only thing was he kept trying to pair the erasers (I had to use 2 sets to have enough). Since that particular tray isn't really useful for pairing, I grabbed an ice cube tray and we did that for a while:)
This kid *loves* Play Doh!!! I try to put it into every lesson. So for this one, we rolled out the dough, cut it into Christmas shapes, and decorated the tree. I laminated it, of course:)
Here are a few action shots:) Sorry so blurry, I really need a better camera than my phone!
Pouring! My love/hate relationship with pouring works is improving, I guess because so is the kiddo:) He can pour these beans and not spill a single one! And he doesn't throw them all over the room, lol. I found these watering cans from Target, they are *perfect* for pouring. And they are Christmas colors, so they work just fine.
Patterning. Yes, I know it's not a Christmas activity, but I really want him to understand patterns. I bought another one of those Kindergarten prep/activity books, and there was patterning all through it. So this is a printable from Pinterest and some of my bear counters. He hasn't shown much interest in this one, although he did do most of it with me. He thinks it's funny to ask me what the colors are... I guess he's just parroting what I do to him all the time, lol.
Hobby Lobby, I love you! Look how cute this little Christmas tree is! It's solid metal (and heavy!) so I can do a magnet work if I wanted. But I thought I would try some threading/fine motor to start with. So we cut pipe cleaners into short lengths, and bent them into hangers. The star ornaments are from Target, and they worked really well. Cameron loved this tree, and had a great time decorating it. He was very concerned that we didn't have gold star to put on top of the tree (it came with one attached). He also tried to open the little pretend presents at the bottom of the tree :)
Yuk, this picture is horrid, but I cannot seem to figure out how to take pics of the lightbox! There is one of the many window gels we accumulated this year. Don't laugh, I still have my palm tree up from the Chicka Chicka unit:)
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