Holiday Fun in December!

December is always such an exciting month at the preschool!  The first week of December we learned about winter and snow, complete with snowmen!  The children thought it was pretty fun and silly to make long, skinny snowmen with a letter of their name on each snowball.  Learning to recognize and write their name is important and this was a creative approach to becoming more familiar with the letters in their name.  

 We also worked on number recognition as well as one-to-one correspondence as we played this snowball game.  The children rolled a numbered die and then got to place a “snowball” on that number of snowmen.  

 The children always enjoy story time.  Ms. Ann read Jan Brett’s “The Hat” to this class about some very interesting animals who decide to wear a little girl’s winter clothes!  

 One of the letters we worked on this month was “W”.  The children made Winter W’s by tracing the w’s with a pencil, then adding Elmer’s glue and then adding pulled apart cotton balls for a snowy, wintry effect.  

Another letter we learned was “G” for “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”.  The Pre-K kids got to have a rare special treat of watching a little cartoon movie of the Grinch.  We talked about what Christmas is all about and reinforced the concept of loving and sharing and being kind, especially at Christmas!

 As Christmas got closer and closer, we read lots of Christmas stories and made some cute Christmas crafts.  We worked on shapes as the Pre-K students glued 3 different sizes of triangles together to make a Christmas tree.  They really liked being able to decorate their own tree and making it unique.

  “C” is for Christmas Cookies!  We added different shaped cookies to make the letter “C”, then the kids “decorated” their cookies with crayon icing and sprinkles!  We know Santa loves cookies!

 Play-doh is always a hit!  The children loved playing make believe as they rolled our their dough and cut out their own Christmas cookies!  Playing with Play-doh strengthens the little muscles in children’s fingers which are important for writing and other fine motor skills and make believe fosters creativity, confidence, and social skills!

All of our students have been so good this year Santa just had to come to visit each class at our preschool!  Of course, the children were delighted!!  They each got a turn to sit on his lap and visit with Santa.  They felt so special!  I love the magic that Santa brings!

I couldn’t resist adding these darling pictures of precious moments caught on camera of some of the kids reading and exploring books as well as playing during centers!  

So many life skills are learned as the children come to preschool each day.  The balance of academic and social skills helps our preschoolers be prepared for Kindergarten in every way!