Homemade Christmas Gifts

Since I was a kid my family has always participated in a gift exchange for Christmas. We all give everyone a gift. It doesn't have to be anything expensive but at least something for everyone. I wanted to include Jake in this gift giving tradition. Last year we started by making coasters for everyone. This year we are making ornaments. We mixed together some salt dough and rolled it out.

He did a great job using the cookie cutters. I moved them to a cookie sheet and poked holes in them. I used a straw to stamp a hole and let me tell you that is the way to do it! Super easy and perfect size holes.

We also made some hand prints. I saw the hand print Santas on Pinterest and knew I had to make some! I baked the ornaments until they dried out. We painted them the next day.

After the paint dried we used paint sticks to paint on faces. We then strung them with red yarn. I had Jake decide which ornament to give to which family member by showing him pictures of each person. We live away from all of our family and although Jake gets to see everyone often he is still only two years old so can forget who each person is. So I have an album with each family member's photo. We flipped through the album and Jake told me which ornament was for which family member. I then put them in a bag with a name tag. I will have him pass them out on Christmas!

As for the Santas, I decided to paint them because of the intricate design. I think they are really cute and a gift for the grandmas that they will cherish!

Merry Christmas!

Comments

December Project-Based Learning: Sharing Through the Season

Every classroom teacher knows how crazy the classroom can be from Halloween to winter break. There are fun community activities, holidays, and a lot of excitement! I learned instead of trying to fight against the hype, to channel the excitement into projects! This time of year the necessary elementary classroom routines become dull and have a harder time keeping student interest. So what better time to introduce project-based learning! I feel strongly about learning about the culture and traditions of others. In my classroom, over the years I have learned traditions celebrated in holidays I was familiar with and traditions from holidays I was not aware of previously. This project was created to provide a way for students to share their personal family traditions during this exciting time being all-inclusive and without making religious statements. Project Objective: The students will each select and read a picture book to the class asking questio...

Play to Write- Week 3

We participating in a Wednesday Play Group called Play to Write over at Cherrios and Lattes . This is week 3- Write/Spell Your Name. We started this week's practice with some name tracing. Cherrios and Lattes provides the printable for some dotted letters. She suggested doing rainbow writing with this sheet. I showed Jacob but he was more interested in writing all the Jacobs. I started by modeling on the first name. Then I held his hand and we did it together. Finally I let him do the last three on his own with only my verbal prompts. He took this very seriously and was very proud of himself! I was surprised at how much he liked doing this activity. He has a long way to go but he did pretty well! One thing I had to repeat was not to go around the o and a more than once. He wanted to go around and around. This is an activity that I think he will want to do again! The next activity was Missing Letter Name Practice. We started by singing a little song I sing fo...

Name Writing Practice

Jacob did a little name writing practice today. He was asked to trace the dotted lines to write letters for his name. This is good practice with spelling as well. I had him say each letter as he wrote the letter. As you can see he is very choppy and not exactly on the dotted lines. His motor skills are not quite sharp enough yet to be able to hold the crayon and he especially loses control as he works on towards the end. We also did a Missing Letter Name Practice. Both of these ideas came from Cherrios and Lattes ' Play to Write, Write to Read. These are good ways to practice names and writing. He gets very angry if he thinks he made a mistake. See the scribbling. I have to reinforce that it is ok to make a mistake and that everyone makes mistakes but we just keep trying. Practice is the only way to get better. When this happens I cannot help but think of my former students that did the very same thing and proceeded to throw fits and give up. I hope to help Jacob ge...

Structured Play

Search This Blog