Reindeer Food

One of the things we did this week was make reindeer food.  This is so simply.  They just mixed oats and glitter in a bag and added a label.  We were able to incorporate math skills by having students measure their ingredients out.  For the label, I just searched for "Reindeer Food" on TeachersPayTeachers and found several options.

 

 

 

 

Santa's Workshop

Our dramatic play for the next two weeks is Santa's Workshop.  We put lots of wrapping paper, ribbons, bows, gift bags, tissue paper, etc. in the center.  The kids have had a blast wrapping and delivery presents!  I can't tell you how many wooden blocks I've received as presents in the last two weeks!  Haha

 

 

 

 

 

December Odds and Ends

This is such an easy center to set up.  I have different pages hung on the board.  Below each set of words is a basket with all the magnetic letters they need to complete each word on the list.  Once they complete one set, they can move on to the next set. Easy peasy.

 

 

We love reading to our fifth grade buddies!  This month we read a Christmas book with the phrase "can you see".  They read for about 20 minutes and then we played on the playground with our buddies!  It was a great end to our day!

 

Gingerbread Man Hunt

Throughout the season we did tons of gingerbread activities.  Today we made a gingerbread cookie and of course when we went to get him out of the oven he had run away!  After a chase around the building (he left us lots of great clues), we found him back in our classroom!  What a tasty snack!  He was so easy to make.  We purchased the Betty Crocker gingerbread mix, a Wilton pan from Amazon, and we were on our way!  Cooking in the classroom is a great way to incorporate math skills, not to mention cooking is a life skill our little friends will need as they get older!

 

Discussing how to read a recipe (ingredients and step by step directions)

 

(mixing the batter up)

 

(I forgot to take a picture of him before we cut him all up!  We did lots of little squares because we shared with our fifth grade reading buddies who were coming up to listen to us read after snack!)

 

 

 

 

T is for Tree Stained Glass

I absolutely love doing stained glass projects with my kiddos!  Here are our Christmas tree ones!  Once you have the frame cut out, place it on a section of clear contact paper.  Then have your students put squares of tissue paper down on it.  We used Christmas tissue paper to make it look like trees with ornaments.  Add another piece of contact paper on top.  Trim excess contact paper off and hang in a window.

 

 

 

Peppermint Scented Playdoh and Rice

I love incorporating scented items into my classroom!  For December I added peppermint scented playdoh and peppermint scented rice.  The kids had so much fun!

 

 

Peppermint Playdoh

 

Ingredients:

1 c. flour

1/4 c. salt

1 1/2 tbsp. cream of tarter

1 tbsp. vegetable oil

1 c. water

food coloring

peppermint oil

 

Directions:

Bring 1 cup of water to a boil.

Add food coloring and peppermint oil to water.

Combine flour, salt, and cream of tarter.

Slowly add colored water to dry ingredients.

Add additional flour until desired consistency.

 

This recipe kept four children at a time happy, but I will definitely double it next time!

  

 

Peppermint Scented Rice

 

To scent rice I fill a gallon size bag about 2/3 full of rice.  I add a few drops of food coloring, scented oil, and water and then shake the bag of rice until it's coated well.  It works great!  

 



 

 

Clean Desk Reindeer

At Thanksgiving I posted about the Clean Desk Turkey....well, apparently the Clean Desk Reindeer was a LITTLE bit busier than the Turkey because he didn't leave notes this time, just treats at the end of the week!  This is definitely not the best picture ever, but you can mostly see 8 brown reindeer noses (Whoopers) and 1 red reindeer nose (Jelly Belly cheery thingy).  You could fill the bags with anything....M&Ms, Hershey kisses, stickers or mini erasers (if you aren't allowed to do food)....you get the idea!

 

FREEBIE ALERT: To download the bag toppers, click HERE! 
If you want step-by-step directions how to make the bags,

see my Thanksgiving post by clicking HERE!

What will my next treat bags be you ask? 

Why I do believe we'll be having a Clean Desk Snowman visit our classroom!  And of course, we'll have some other snowman treats, too!  Stay tuned!

 

HAPPY HOLIDAYS! 

Christmas Bulletin Boards

This first picture continues to amaze me!  I was going to be out for the afternoon so I decided to leave a little art project for the end of the day.  I left paper with ornaments drawn on them, yarn, fancy scissors, decorative paper, sequins, etc.  I had put up the black paper and red border, and told them they could hang their ornaments themselves.  When I came in the next day I was astonished how great the board looked!  They did such a nice job and were so creative with their designs!

Idea from: http://firstgradeblueskies.blogspot.com/2013/12/easy-ornament-bulletin-board-freebie.html

This is our bulletin board out in the hallway.

Craftivity found at: http://allisonspeechpeeps.blogspot.com/2012/12/christmas-speech-craftivity-freebie.html

It's a two part board.  The top part has Christmas trees that they wrote analogies on.  They came up with analogies and then write them on the ornaments.  For example read:words::count:numbers.

 

The bottom part of the board has Christmas presents.  Students cut out verbs and sorted them as past or present verbs.