For our last preschool playdate before the new year, we did lots of fun Christmas Activities and focused on the Letter J.
First, we read a story about Baby Jesus- it is called Stable in Bethlehem -a Christmas counting book.
We used small blocks that I got from Dollar Tree for the kids to used to count while reading the story.
My two year old LOVED pushing the button on the plastic candles and lighting all the lights! I thought that was a great fine motor skill-- she was so serious about it!
Then she used my old cardboard advent calendar and had to pull out each box... in each box was large gold jingle bell! She was so suprised at what was in the tiny boxes- she loved it! :) The other kiddos wanted to do it as well! :)
For playdate we sorted different Christmas tree patterns from the awesome
1+1+1=1 blog/website.
Then they had to put the Nativity scene in size order. I got most of these cute printable ideas from
1+1+1=1. She has the cutest things for tots and preschoolers! Love this blog/website!!
We talked about the letter J and used a candy cane (upside down) to make the letter J for baby
Jesus!
We also put stickers on the letter J and talked about Jesus' birthday! :)
Both of these activities are also from
1+1+1=1.
Then we made Christmas tree cones. We took ice cream cones and colored icing green.
They spread the green icing on the cones and sat them upside down.
Afterwards they put sprinkles all over the icing to make the trees look decorated. It worked best to ROLL the trees in the sprinkles. They turned out cute- and YUMMY too!
We read the story of the Little Drummer boy and each child played drums on different canisters and bowls that we had. We have one drum and so each kiddo got to be the "drummer boy" for part of the song.
Then we worked on colors and shapes with a cute christmas tree coloring activity.
We also worked on our letters and writing skills. Tracing on these cute forms - I laminated them and we used dry erase markers.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2011!