Celebrating Christmas

We had a fun time celebrating Christmas in preschool!

Decorating the Tree

Christmas Patterns

Festive Sensory Bins

Gingerbread Play and Baking

Making Cards and Gifts

Reading Christmas words and making name chains

And lots of favorite stories, songs, creating and dramatic play

We even built Santa's workshop at the North Pole...

Hope everyone had an amazing holiday! 

Food and Thanksgiving

I had planned to catch up on blogging about our classroom activities over Thanksgiving break, and then my computer crashed! We were able to get it back up and running about a week later, and I am just now finding a few moments to post a bit about our month in November. This time of year always gets so crazy busy- it can be hard to keep up!

For most of November we explored the topic of FOOD- an interest that comes up in dramatic play basically every day in our classroom. Along with food, we thought about why our body needs food and other ways to take care of our bodies. And since a lot of the real food we eat comes from farms, we also did a few farm activities as well.  :) Here are some highlights!

Farm Animals Play

Counting and adding feet. 

Farm Crops Sensory Bin

Farm animal observational drawings

 After reading one of our favorites, "Little Blue Truck," we were inspired to get a little muddy...

Fruits and Vegetables

We talked a lot about eating healthy foods, and how it can be good to eat the "colors of the rainbow." 

Thanksgiving Dinner

We created dinner plate collages with this counting activity, as we also practice good table manners (i.e. taking only small amounts first, and then going back for more after everyone has had some).

Family Feast

We made rainbow turkeys at our family feast out of colorful finger foods.

Pumpkin Pie

There was also lots of pie making dramatic play, both with pumpkin pie playdough and felt pieces.

Our Fall Nature Collection

We have gathered quite the fall nature collection over the pat month, as the children have brought in outdoor treasures for math bags or found things out in the yard. We've put the items to use in different ways, like sorting, counting games, transient art, etc.

Nature Collage

This week, we created some more permanent masterpieces through a collaborative collage art project. The children loved selecting pieces, designing, and gluing. 

They are hanging up in our classroom now, as part of our fall decor. :) 

Inside Exploration

After we used up all the objects that we wanted for our collages, we took our collection back outside and explored the question, what is inside? The children also wanted to explore some of the leftover garden produce from my garden.