It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Happy holidays!  Can you believe how quickly this school year is flying by?  It's already December, and we only have two more weeks of school before the holiday break!  Because we only have three weeks of school in December, we spent some time each day last week working on making our classroom look festive!  The kids LOVE to create crafts to decorate our room and hallway.  The kids asked (with every single craft mind you) when they could take them home!  Don't worry - all of these wonderful creations will come home before vacation, so save some room to display them at home!

We began the week making Santa Claus faces for our hallway. The kids learned how to make curls by cutting in a continuous circular motion to create the beard!

The Red Star group

The Purple Star group

The Blue Star group

The Green Star group

Here are the completed Santa faces.  I just love how they all have a different look even though they all made the same craft.

We spent quite a bit of time reading various versions of The Gingerbread Man.  The kids really enjoyed hearing so many different variations of the familiar story. We read 3-4 stories about the Gingerbread Man, one about a Gingerbread Bear, another about the Gingerbread Girl, Gingerbread Baby, and even one called The Gingerbread Pirates! We decorated our own paper gingerbread men, and wrote about where their gingerbread man was 'running to'.  We then posted them on one of our bulletin boards. The kids even enjoyed the taste of gingerbread cookies when we finished them!

We created three different types of paper ornaments for our classroom Christmas tree.  Our first was a Santa head made on tag board. The kids traced around their hands, then turned it around an made it into Santa's face by adding a face, color and cotton balls.

Our second paper ornament was an angel.  The kids decorated the robe with Christmas pictures, then cut the angel out, and hung it on the tree!

Our final ornament involved math.  We assigned green triangle pattern blocks as 1.  Blue diamonds were worth 2 (because two green triangles fit on them).  Red trapezoids were worth 3 (because three green triangles fit on them).  The kids used paper pattern blocks to create a design on the front side of the ornament.  They then had to write an addition equation that matched the design on the backside.

The kids also created paper wreaths in class, which are now hanging from our ceiling!

The Red Star group

The Blue Star group

The Purple Star group

The Green Star group

Our wreaths drying on our table

They look wonderful hanging from our ceiling.

Finally, the children thought about someone special in their lives.  We then talked about what would make a very special gift for that person.  The children then wrote "If I were a Christmas gift, I would be a _______  for ______."  They wrote on the shape of an ornament and we hung them up on our final bulletin board.

As you can see, we spent quite a bit of time creating our special crafts last week. When we walk into our classroom, there is so much to look at and enjoy! The kids are very proud of their work and anxiously wait to bring them home for you to display with pride!