Gingerbread Playhouse

This month we built a play house.

           
     We spent a morning painting it brown like gingerbread.
 
                 And the roof white like snowy frosting.
 
As soon as it was put together the children were in it, then out again.
                
The next day we painted candy stripes for decorations and used
               our sticky lights around the edges.

The next day we added cupcake liners to the roof that looked like
                                 candy decorations.
              
Toddler aged children are enjoying this play house the most. 
              Probably because of the size. 
       It’s a narrow box so not much room inside.


At the art table we have a hole punch shaped like a snowflake. 
It’s a fairly easy punch for the children to use and they use it a lot.
 
     So we made lots of snowflakes to hang from the eaves and
                          on the side of the house.
        
Our gingerbread playhouse is a welcoming sight in the middle of our room.
                          “Come in and play!”

Old St. Nicholas Had a Tree

Looking for new to me holiday songs or story and I found this one
on Let the Wild Rumpus Start.  I modified it slightly and made it
for the magnetic board instead of out of felt.  My tree was a bit
big for my magnetic board but it still works.
           
Old St. Nicholas had a Tree is a version of Old MacDonald had a Farm.


The decorations and actions that I chose for each are…
stars – twinkle, twinkle
bells – ding dong
ball ornament – jazz hands
candy cane – lick, lick
ginger bread man – yum, yum

When using a familiar song and changing words can be a challenge.  In the following video you will hear several parents sing Old MacDonald before correcting themselves.  I managed to make it through that story time singing the correct words but the following day I slipped up.  We just need to laugh and continue on.

Here are the words...

Old St. Nicholas had a tree
Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho
And on his tree he had a candy cane
Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho
With a lick, lick here and a lick, lick there
here a lick, there a lick,
everywhere a lick, lick.
Old St. Nicholas had a tree
Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho.

Enjoy!

A New Build-a-Snack for Christmas

               
                    Today we built a tree for snack.
                
                                 A grape tree.
  
Grapes for the tree, carrots for the garland and craisins for the ornaments.
                 
             Building a tree included counting 1 – 2 – 3.
             
We talked about the decorations on the tree, garland and ornaments. 

Giving us an opportunity to talk with the families about their traditions at home.

Card Making with Bubble Wrap

             
This morning we painted bubble wrap to make Christmas cards. 
I pre-cut bubble wrap into triangles and provided paint and paper.

The children were soon trying to paint on the bubbles. 
       A different feel then flat paper. 
  
Some painted all one colour while others tried every colour.


As she was painting she noticed that the blue changed when she added yellow.
       
She added red on top of blue and noticed it change to purple.

    
                   Ready to make a print. 
Place the folded paper on top of the bubble wrap and
                  press down, all around.
 
             Lift off and you have a colourful tree card.

       
     The children were encouraged to print inside the card.
The words, ‘to’, ‘from’, and ‘Merry Christmas’ were available
              for the children to copy if they wished.

Pegkin Project

During November families were talking about count down calendars
so it got me looking on Pinterest for different ideas and I found one
            that intrigued me.
         
Paintcutpaste’s elfin advent calendar was the motivation for our
                    Pegkin Project.

I started by asking families to take a plain wooden peg doll home
and create whatever they wished, fairy, elf, fire fighter, whatever
their creative minds could come up with.  Then I asked them to
chose a day in December to deliver it back to school.

The month quickly filled up and we are now enjoying meeting our
new Pegkins.  By December 20th, the last day of school before
Christmas break, we will have 25 new peg dolls to play with.

Here are six that arrived this week.
Each comes with a little introduction that the children told me.
                
Pegkin #1 Bluesy Twosy – she likes everything blue like blueberries,
blue bells and blue butterflies and she likes things to come in twos so
              she can share with a friend.
                 
Pegkin #2 Auntie Nancie - she is from Vancouver and likes to visit
grandma's house. She wears a scarf so she can play at the park.
            
Pegkin #3 Ella - she likes to play Hide and Seek with cats especially
Tibby the cat. Ella lives in the dirt in the garden with worms.
                  
Pegkin #4 Claude - no it's not Santa Claus but a relative. His name is
Claude and he does live at the North Pole and his job is to read Santa's
         letters and he likes to write.
              
Pegkin #5 Spiderman – he likes to make webs.
              
Pegkin #7 Snowflake - she lives in the snow and plays with other
fairies like Tinkerbell. Their favourite game is Hide and Seek.

Pegkin #6 had to stay home because the school was closed for a snow day,
               we’ll meet him or her next week.

Meanwhile the new Pegkins have been getting comfortable in their new home.
    
Last year the grade 5 class in our school did a pulley & lever project which we went to look at.  I was very impressed with all of the buildings that they had created and asked what they would do with them after they were graded.  Most we taking them home but some were going to throw theirs out so instead they donated them to StrongStart.  And that is how we ended up with this beautiful tree house.
    
The Pegkin Tree house is a very busy area.  Children, regardless if they are a boy
                  or girl, are attracted to this area.

Is it the imaginary aspect?  Is it the small scale?  Or is it that it’s not decorated in any stereotyped pink or blue theme?  Whatever it is, it is a place to sit and enjoy the creating.

Next weekend you’ll meet seven new Pegkins.

Star Light, Star Bright

While we were studying outer space I introduced the
overhead projector for the first time this school year.
            
A family lent me the blue mesh to hang over the area
and I used a frame from a pop up house to hold it away
                   from the wall.

The frame is just the right size for the children to go inside and open
              enough for a grown up to be involved.


A few things we used were constellation pictures and mesh stars.
     
Then I added coloured plexi-glass stars, coloured circles and
                   stir sticks with see through tops.


These two boys discovered that they could turn off the projection on
             the wall by lifting and closing the top flap.
 
They experimented with it and was able to move the light from the floor
                    and up the wall and back to off.
        
            And there was also interest in the mesh.