Christmas Activities (3 Year Old & Pre-K)

While we are slowly working our way through some purchased curriculum this year, I am still supplementing with some fun themed activities. Here are some of the Christmas activities we did. Archer is three and a half.

I got a floral cone at the craft store and stuck in a bunch of toothpicks. He had fun decorating his "tree" with mini ornaments.

 

No action pics, but he did have fun decorating his Magna-Tile tree with little jingle bells.

To work on greater than and less than, I made these stocking printables.

Christmas playdough. I meant to get a cute little organizer for all of the fun Christmas accessories we have, but he got to it before I did. He didn't seem to care. 

Gingerbread playdough tray.

I strung a tinsel garland through a basket with big holes for this math activity. I put a bunch of tens frame matching cards down inside and he had to dig them out and match them up. 

Star beads and pipe cleaners made for a super simple fine motor activity.

We worked on this ornament craft together. It was intended for older kids, so we adapted it a bit to fit his ability.

Christmas Tree 10s frame

We did some Christmas Cuisenaire pages.

This tray was a mom fail. I found some fun plastic ornaments at the craft store and gave him a bunch of colorful pom poms and little plastic gifts to go in. My plan was for him to be able to fill and dump, but I accidentally bought ornaments with holes that were too small for dumping. He had fun while it lasted.

I made him this syllable worksheet. We used bingo chips to cover the star that had the correct number of syllables.

Building with Candy Construction.

We have a few different Christmas Sticker books, but I only snagged this one picture.

You might also like my other Christmas Resources

 

Gingerbread Playdough Tray

We've really been into play dough around here lately (mostly making numbers or country maps), but I decided to mix it up with this gingerbread play dough tray.

I started by adding cinnamon, ginger, cloves and allspice to my regular playdough recipe. On the tray I added gingerbread man cookie cutters, buttons, tinsel pipe cleaners and a rolling pin. I found some great fake gumdrops and peppermints from HappyKawaiiSupplies.

Archer was so excited he wouldn't even let me take a picture of the tray before he started playing.

The little "peppermints" are his favorite. While he did initially make some gingerbread men, he moved on from that pretty quickly. He spent a long time putting them in the dough, taking them out and building continents with them...

 

Christmas Cuisenaire Templates

As part of trying to incorporate hands on math activities, I have been making Cuisenaire Rod Templates. Archer always enjoys matching the rods and then really enjoys counting up each color at the end. These are some Christmas templates I made.

There are color and black and white versions of five different fall images.

Print the Christmas Cuisenaire Templates Here

You might also like my other Christmas Resources

 

5 Ways Of Boosting Your Child’s Confidence When It Comes To Learning

 

https://unsplash.com/photos/gsRi9cWCIB0 

Children’s brains are like sponges when they’re very young. This continues until they’re into their teenage years. When you tell them something relatively interesting, then soak it up and want to learn about even more. The problem that a lot of kids have when it comes to their learning, however, is that they feel a little insecure or anxious when it comes to actually pursuing certain subjects. A lot of kids, for example, are a little too scared to express themselves in classrooms or afraid to ask questions. 

 

Fortunately, there is plenty out there that can help in terms of boosting kids’ minds and making them more confident in and out of classrooms. You don’t have to create any special formula or do anything too complicated, thankfully. It’s just a case of handling a few basic tasks and training their minds to feel much more assured of themselves. Here are a few ideas for you:

 

Ensure That They’re Around The Right People 

 

Kids that feel as though they’re going to be picked at for getting a question wrong or that feel just a little down overall will never reach their full potential. Feeling the pressure of other kids is horrible when you just want to be able to become more intelligent. Try to find good people that will raise your child. We’re talking about teachers, counselors, and other kids around the school. It’s amazing what a good crowd can do to a person of all ages. 

 

Allow Them To Pursue Subject That They Actually Like

 

Don’t force them to be excellent at everything that they’ve been given. Some kids can do this, but it’s very rare. Allow them to get stuck into a subject that they enjoy and that they genuinely do well in. If they put lots of energy into something that won’t help them in life, then it’s going to be a huge waste.

 

Find The Right Platforms For Them To Learn From 

 

There are so many different areas of life where your kids can learn from. Take, for instance, a cyber charter school, where they can understand so much all from the devices in their homes. If they have a little anxiety or cannot make it to a schooling establishment, this would be perfect. Think also about the other kinds of software available. Some are amazing in this day and age. 

 

Let Them Know That Failure And Mistakes Are Okay 

 

Kids are made to feel like errors are embarrassing and wrong a lot of the time. The truth is that we’ll never learn unless we make mistakes. Let them know this. Let them understand that even the most embarrassing fails are good because they teach us. 

 

Create Challenges And Rewards 

 

When kids have little goals to accomplish, they feel as though they have a lot more to prove. People of all ages enjoy setting goals and completing them – especially with the advancement of the likes of video games. Checking boxes and getting things done is very satisfying. Do this with them.

This is a contributed post

Christmas Math Printables 2

In prepping for some of our Christmas themed school activities, I made some math materials for Archer. I haven't used all of these yet, but thought I would share in case anyone else would like to use them. Note: I did make some Christmas Math Printables for Xander when he was little, they're just too easy for Archer at this point.

Greater Than/Less Than Stocking

We've been working on the concepts of greater than and less than. For this activity I made a bunch of numbered stockings and put them in a little container together. He will draw two out and we will hang them to a ribbon in the order he draws them (bringing in the clothespins for fine motor practice, hooray for multitasking). I made greater than and less than stockings on yellow, both in symbols and words, for him to practice putting in the middle.

Christmas Tree 10 Frame

He really liked a 10s frame worksheet I found back in the fall, so I decided to make a Christmas version. He will fill in the frames with the correct number of dots (in the correct position).

Christmas Number Matching Tinsel Hunt

He likes 10s frame matching activities, so I made one with elves and reindeer. I weaved some tinsel garland through a basket with big holes (both from Dollar Tree). Then I buried the cards down in the basket for him to find. Because 1-10 is too easy, I only printed 11-20, but the file has all of them.

Print the Christmas Math Printables 2

You might also like my other Christmas Resources

The Best Activities To Help Boost Your Kids' Minds

 It’s clearly very important to be able to ensure your children are able to make great use of their minds, but how can you actually make sure of this? There are a few ways in particular that you might want to focus on this, and in particular it will come down to engaging in certain activities with them. In this post, we’ll take a look at exactly what activities are best for boosting your kids’ minds. Any of these are worth doing on a regular basis for children of a variety of ages.

Source - CCO Licence

Word Games

Language ability is a really central and important part of all this, so you should make sure that you are engaging with your children in some word games on a regular basis. There are many kinds of word games that you might want to try out with them. For instance, you could get them to do a word unscrambler kind of game, which can really be beneficial. Or you might want to simply play a game where you learn new words and try to memorise them together - thus improving their memory and vocabulary in one fell swoop.

Sudoku

Sudoku has been around for a few years now, and it is generally regarded as one of the best puzzles out there. In fact, it has even been shown to help keep dementia at bay. But it’s not only good for older people - your kids can benefit from doing some sudoku too. Just a sudoku puzzle a day is often going to be enough to ensure your child’s logic skills are developing as you would want them to. Consider getting them a book of sudoku puzzles and encouraging them to solve them all.

Mastermind

If you have ever played Mastermind before, you will understand just why it is such a powerful kind of game for your children to play. In Mastermind, one person picks a code of four coloured pegs, and the other person has to guess the code through a variety of guesses. This is great practice in using deductive reasoning and logic to work out the answer to something, and that is something that everyone needs to develop in their childhood. It is also just a fun game, and one that your child is bound to enjoy playing with you - or with your other children.

Source - CCO Licence

Field Trips

From time to time, it is wise to take your children on a field trip, as visiting interesting places is a good way to help the brain develop over time. Where you take them is up to you, but you might want to focus particularly on museums, places of historical interest, and related places, as these are the sorts of field trips that tend to be really beneficial for boosting their minds. You should aim to do a few of these a year, if possible.

If you engage in those activities, you are going to find that your children’s minds are boosted greatly, and their cognitive development improves.

This is a contributed post.

Thanksgiving Activities: Prek-K

Things have been a little crazy around here, so honestly, we did not do nearly as many Thanksgiving themed activities as I had hoped. A lot of our "Thanksgiving" school activities got lumped in with the pumpkin and leaves activities. However, to preserve ideas for myself in the future, here is what we did do.

Thanksgiving Play dough. I gave him pumpkin and acorn vase scatter, cookie cutters, feathers and our pumpkin spice play dough. Of course, he mostly wanted to use his number candles. :)

I purchased a Thanksgiving sensory bin unit from a Differentiated Kindergarten. He did the number matching activity. There were a ton of activities in the packet, but he really only wanted to do a couple of the number ones. The rest I will save for next year (and/or the next kid)

We also used some of the number cards and a worksheet to draw a card and write the two numbers that come before it.

Family tradition of making cranberry relish together.

I made sure to have out lots of Thanksgiving books. He read a few, but is in a phase where he wants to read the same few books over and over and over. I can't wait til he will try "new" books again.

His work corner for November. Some he did at home and some at preschool.

 

Pre-K Fall Leaves and Pumpkin Activities

 While we are slowly working our way through some purchased curriculum this year, I am still incorporating some fun themed activities. In September I posted apple activities and here are the Leaves and Pumpkin activities.

We did the pumpkin, corn and leaf from the Fall Cuisenaire Template

Leaf word families from 3 Dinosaurs

Fall play dough included some acrylic apples, leaves and pumpkins, some sticks and mini pinecones and some cookie cutters.

He decided to add in some googly eyes and number candles.

Autumn puzzle from the dollar store.

Mazes from  Busy Bee Kids Printables.

Sensory bin with a tractor, birdseed, pinecones, and acrylic acorns, pumpkins and leaves.

We went on leaf hunt and I showed him how to do leaf rubbings (he had no interest in doing them himself.

This little pipe cleaner tree I made last year was a hit again. He enjoyed putting all of the pony beads on the tree as "leaves."

Picking out his pumpkin at the patch.

Working on leaves for our tree of gratitude. Each day we put up a leaf with something for which we are thankful. Last year I laminated them, so I didn't have to cut anything out this year!!

Pumpkin Number Bonds from Kindergarten Worksheets and Games

Number matching with him pumpkins and trucks

Pumpkin Seed Sight Word activity

Pumpkin tens frames from 

Books! As always, we read lots of books about leaves and pumpkins. This was only one shelf setup.