Merry (Belated) Christmas

Looks like I did make a New Year's resolution this year - more blogging!!!  I apologize for my lack of post lately, hopefully I am back on track.  My class had an amazing few weeks of Christmas fun and I hope you can get a few ideas for your classroom.  If you are a regular reader of my blog, you probably already know that I don't normally do the same art projects year after year.  To make my list of "must dos" an activity has to be very special and most of our Christmas activities are just that.  Let's started with one of my favorites, our name Christmas trees.

I love watching the students carefully pick out their triangles.  Then the excitement in their eyes as they write each letter of their name.  Finally, the sheer joy as they glue everything together.  This activity always gives the children a wonderful feeling of success!

Our Christmas gift to our parents are always a hit.  This year I actually had a couple of parents "ask" if we would be making our special ornament.  That was seriously a proud moment for me!  Here is our ornament.

We dress the girls as angels and the boys are shepherds.  The children always love painting their picture frames.  Then, we have to make our wrapping paper!  Since it is "B" week we use balloons

 

and baseballs!

It was a little messy, but it was a lot of fun!

Here is another oldie, but goodie . . . our puzzle wreath!  Everyone glues on some old puzzle pieces to our circle.  It is always fun to watch the children "put the ugly side" up.  They think it is funny that we are not using the "pretty side".

After the glue drives we put on the green paint.

 

After the paint dries we added little red sequins. and a pretty red ribbon.

I know these look pretty on every one's Christmas trees!

 

We have worked very hard all year on our scissor cutting skills so everyone was ready for our next project.  First we cut strips of red paper and glued them on to a large circle.  Next, we added our hand prints and the results were wonderful!

 



Isn't this the sweetest peppermint?

 

Our next couple of projects really helped us to explain to the students the real meaning of Christmas.  The parents have not seen the first project!  It is being saved for our big end of the year art show.    I love this and children enjoyed it too.  The children enjoyed making the "sand" with some old make-up brushes and the star was painted with glitter paint!

 

You know every now and then a simple project is fun and since we had to rehearse for our big Christmas program, our classroom time was limited.  I think this next project was perfect!

I loved when one of m students said she wanted this to stay in her room so she could "see Baby Jesus all the time".

 

Okay, one more art project to close out our Christmas theme.  This is a new one!

 

Each child tore pieces of different colored green construction paper into small pieces and glued them on a triangle shape cut from poster board.  This was a great way for us to use up some scrap paper, review our shapes and work on our fine motor skills all at the same time!  We even used our fingers to make little glitter paint ornaments!

 

Thanks for visiting with us!  I hope you use some of our ideas and if you do please let me know how it turned out!!!  







Transportation and "T" Week

AHHHHH!  "T" Week!  This is an exciting week for us and yes, it is ONE of my favorites.  Let me show you some of the terrific stuff we did during our "T"ransportation Week!

We started off the week reviewing the shapes we have been talking about and making our wonderful shape car!  This ended up being more fun than I expected because everyone got so excited when they recognized the shapes.  I know this is simple, but it was very fun and effective.

Tuesday is a day when I try and have "extra-fun" art for us because we do not have any of our "special" activities (i.e. Spanish, Music, Chapel) and that can make for a long day.  This Tuesday really was extra special because we started our day with SCISSORS!!!!  I have to admit that this class LOVES to cut with scissors and they are very good!  We cut and cut and made these adorable little sailboats.

Of course everyone got to pick their favorite colors!  While our sailboats were drying we started working on making some water for them to float in.

The water was really fun to make because we just squirted blue, green and white paint onto the paper and started mixing it up!  WOW, the results were amazing!  I love projects like this because the children are so proud of them.  Here are the final results!

 

Everyone had such a good time all week practicing our "T" sounds.  We decided our favorite "T" word was turtle so we decided to make one.



 He is very simple but look closely . . . .

there is a tic-tac-toe board on his back!!!

 

Our Fabulous Fun Friday was extra special this week!  We headed to kitchen was all of the plastic trucks and cars that I could find.

 

We had a great lesson in sharing and mixing colors!  Can you see the green????

 

Now, finally my favorite part of "T" week began . . . "T"ubes and "T"ape!!!  OH MY!!  This is the one of the best days ever!  All we did was collect lots, lots and lots of paper towel, toilet paper and even wrapping paper tubes.

(This is only a small portion of the tubes.)

 

My friend and co-worker, Mrs. Christi and I cut long sections of masking tape and the imagination took over!

 



Some were small, some were tall, some were just plain HUGE!  No one cared, we just had a great day.  My favorite part of this activity is seeing the children's faces as they proudly take their creations to their parents at the end of the day!!!!!

 

WOW, this was really a terrific week.  Thank you so much for visiting with us and I hope you stop back by again.





Spring is Here!

The good news is that my husband and I actually survived Spring Break 2013.  The bad news is, it cost of a small fortune!  It all started with a freak wind storm that his our little area of town, ripping shingles off of our roof.  Then, my washer and dryer both decided to break down.  You are now reading an article written by one very unhappy preschool teacher.  But, we are getting a new roof and my classroom got a new reading room courtesy of my old washer and dryer boxes!  First they needed a little painting!

 

The final result was very colorful!



This amazingly colorful reading box sits in the corner of my classroom (not on a table, this picture was taken while it was drying!).  It is filled with pillows, blankets and a small flashlight.  The children are invited to take a book in our new reading room and spend some alone time reading.  It has quickly become a class favorite!

 

The washer and dryer also had some wonderful cardboard supports that I just could not throw away.  All we did was all a Styrofoam ball and . . . . .

 

 



instant balancing fun!  The best part is that it cost us $0.00 and when we get tired of them, another class can use it or we will just throw it away!

 

To be honest, I really don't like doing the same art projects year after year.  But our first art project is an exception.  I love our giant sunflowers!  They are very simple but a lot of fun!  We start out by painting a large paper plate yellow.  After it dries, we cut the petals.

 

Next, we add some real sunflower seeds!

While that dries for just a few minutes we paint our giant stems and leaves.

 

When everything is glued together we have a beautiful sunflower!

  

In Alabama, spring means rain (and an occasional tornado!).  So we made it rain on Tuesday!  We glued an umbrella shape onto a piece of light blue paper and the children followed the dots to draw a handle.  Next we added rain drops!  Well, they were really drops of blue paint!

Some drops were bigger than others! :)

 

Here comes the FUN part! 

 Now we have umbrellas with rain falling on them!

The trees in our area are just beautiful right now.  We spent an entire day talking about the trees and how they are "waking up".  Here is our beautiful spring tree project.  We started with a hand print (well, it really is a hand print AND arm print!).

 

 

Then we added the grass. 

We've been working on making patterns.

Look closely, can you see the pattern?

 

 

Finally, we added some little pieces of colorful tissue paper to represent the beautiful flowers on the trees. 

Please note that this one has the flowers falling off the tree

because the wind is blowing!

 



We were also talking about the letter "K" this week and since the wind is blowing so hard we made our very own shape kits.  Of course, we started off with a diamond shape and the children traced the lines to make our pretend kite "sticks".

 Our tails were long pieces of ribbon with different shapes attached.

I don't think they will fly but it is was a fun way to review our shapes!

We also made some yummy springtime cookies.  I made up some sugar cookie dough at home and each child got to cut out their own cookie.  We baked them and added some fun colored icing.  I wish I had some pictures to show you but  . . . . well, my hands were a little sticky! :)

Have a great week and I hope you stop back by soon!