We started out December with Letter L and lights. They painted their own Christmas lights with finger painting and we worked on matching uppercase letter lights to a lowercase letter. We made patterns with colored lights and started working on some Christmas songs. We worked on numbers 9-12 this month and my older class started into their teens a lot. They are getting so good at writing as well and starting to read basic CVC words.
I love our Grinch Day! We listen to the book online with a guy that has so much animation in his voice. We talk about different things that sometimes make us feel grinchy inside. We sorted different characters from the book to see which ones were bigger or smaller than each other and we made our own grinch. I cut out some little hearts to send home with the kids that they could glue on their grinch each time they did something kind for someone and they helped the grinch to have his heart grow 3 times bigger. We found different rhyming words from the book and finished the day off with some green mint chocolate chip ice cream to get away any grinchy feelings.
We decorated a big Christmas tree in our room with different ornaments and numbers. They sorted skittles into groups of colors and we compared greater than and less than, most and least. They got to decorate their tree at the end and eat their ornaments. We started working on their gift to send home to their parents. They were so excited about these as well. I love how much they adore their parents. They love telling me how amazing you all are.
I am sorry, but I didn't get a lot of pictures on Polar Express Day. We sat in rows like we were on a train during calendar and circle time. They finished up parent gifts and drew a picture and wrote what they would choose for the first gift of Christmas. We played some parachute games with bells and each of the kids got a bell to take home with them. We drank hot chocolate and marshmallows for snack time. We practiced the different between a letter B and a letter P and found words with the same beginning sound of these letters. And of course they loved being in their jammies.
Gingerbread Man day was one of their favorite days! We read lots of different versions of the gingerbread man and compared how they were the same and how they were different. We practiced rhyming words more and did some math games as partners with little gingerbread men on a cookie sheet. We also had a little scavenger hunt with rhyming clues to look for a box of gingerbread cookies and frosting and candy to decorate them.
For Centers we built words out of triangles and rectangles to make a Christmas Tree. We made a candy cane out of beads and made patterns with them. We covered the letter that was called out on different snowflakes. We sorted pom poms by color and size and wrote our name and letters in christmas colored sand and a memory shape game with santa and hats.
For our Christmas party we exchanges gifts, decorated a christmas tree snack, played a hide and seek present game where they take turns hiding under a bid box and one person figures out who is the present, we had a snowball fight, a stocking guessing game and pin the nose on Frosty and Christmas tree farm yoga. And then we sang to our parents. It was a fantastic month and I am excited for next year!
Sorry I didn't get more pictures this day, We get busy and I lose track of taking them. :)
