Happy New Year in Preschool - Holiday Recap

 Hello! Well, it sure has been a while. Sorry about that. The holidays, and the time leading up to the holidays were busier than I could have predicted.  In the end, it was a wonderful time and well worth all the effort. I hope you had an outstanding holiday as well.

Going backwards a bit, we sure had fun in preschool (with all the excitement that builds) leading up to winter break. The following are a few of the activities we enjoyed. What was your favorite story, activity or art project you did before break?

Here is a simple ginger bread shape collage.  A teacher on our team found the basic shape in the dollar bin at Target! Got to love that. The rest of the foamies were found at Michaels. Even our youngest students had fun peeling the backs off the foamies and designing their own ginger person.
During this week we also had a great time with gingerbread felt board stories, games and songs. Also, there are so many variations on the classic story available in book form. We had fun exploring some of the alternatives such as Gingerbread Mouse by Katy Bratun and The Gingerbread Girl by Lisa Campbell Ernst.


Fun with contact paper! This awesome project was lead by another teacher on our team. It is contact paper, rolled out the length of the table with dishes of various materials from which the children may choose.  She provided bits of colored cellophane, cotton balls, crinkled paper that is used to stuff gift bags and other little bits and pieces.  I love how they turned out, and look how colorful they are when hung in the classroom window.

On the table....

and in the window...

Once again Pinterest provided some inspiration.  We made this fluffy, green, glittery paint to use at the easel with red and white paper.  The original idea came from Growing a Jeweled Rose blog.
Of course, I forgot the pine essential oil on the day we were mixing it up. But it turned out ok anyway.  We used our fattest brushes which allowed the children to really glop it on. 
We had to refresh the cups pretty often, but by mixing up a good amount in the morning, we were set for the day.  The extra stayed fresh all day covered with foil, but probably would not keep well over night.



Puffy Paint Recipe
~ 1 part shaving cream
~ 1 part school glue
~ green paint, liquid water color or food coloring
~ a few drops of pine essential oil
~ Glitter!

A few more ideas you may find fun or interesting for your classroom...

5 Silly Snowmen

5 silly snowmen, round and fat.

Each one with a funny hat.

Out comes the sun...

and melts away one...

What do you think of that?!

(count down 4, 3, 2, 1)

From Fun Felt Stories on Etsy

pretend cookie baking in the home play center....

A homemade cookie cutter matching game...

another teacher did this and the children really enjoyed it - gems and tree shaped dishes...