Karen's Kindy Life: December 2013

Christmas Fun Crafts and Activities

Snowman (Puffy Paint)

I saw this idea on a teacher's blog and thought the kids would love playing with puffy paint. We've never done it before and it turned out to be a great success. The steps were easy and the kids get to experiment with something different. We use paint quite a lot in our art projects, but the children were excited to use the puffy paint. The only materials we needed were shaving cream and white glue. We had to mix them together and the ratio is 1:1. The children used paintbrushes to paint their snowman craft and all of them look different. You really need to pile on the mixture to see the puffy effect. I let it dry for a day and I let the kids cut out hats, noses, scarves from colored paper and I saw some really creative work!

Christmas Card

At first, I wanted to make a rocking Christmas tree and then I thought this would also be a good Christmas card. :) I cut out the Christmas tree shapes and gave the children some colored circle stickers and they could decorate their tree with the stickers and put a glittery star on top. The I had then color a paper plate on both sides and folded it in half and attached the Christmas trees on top. At last, I added “Merry X'mas” inside the paper plate.

Funny Christmas Songs for kids

I found some funny Christmas songs and these are quite popular amongst my kids :)

Porky Pig's Blue Christmas Song

He's be coming down the Chimney song

All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth song

Santa Claus Mask

This is a Santa Mask we made in class. It was very simple and easy to make. I cut out a hole from the paper plate, then I gave them some cotton for the beard. I asked the kids to roll them into little cotton balls before they glue them on. After they glue on the beard around the paper plate, the last thing they needed to do was to glue on the Santa's hat and a little cotton ball on top! Voila! The children were happy about what they made! :)

Reindeer Craft

I cut out triangle and asked the kids to fold it to form Rudolph's head. Then I asked them to use the red circle stickers as the nose and then they also glued on the googly eyes. The next step is using the Q-tips and white paint to add snow onto the page. The last step is for the kids to put their handprints on the head as the antlers! :)

Rudolph Relay

I cut out a lot of red circles as Rudolf's nose, and I used some Vaseline to put on kids' noses (so the red circles would stay on their noses). Then I asked the children to have a relay with the red circles on their noses! They looked great and they found it really funny!

Christmas Decoration in the Classroom ( making a 3D SNOWMAN with plastic cups)
I saw this idea online and wanted to try it for my class! I stapled the plastic cups together to form 2 half balls. Then added the eyes, nose, hat, scarf and mouth for my snowman!

Making an angel with handprints and footprints

This project took 2 days and was a little bit messy, but I think it was worth the time and effort. We made little angels for Christmas and painted the kids' feet to make the body of the angel and their handprints as the wings. Then I took pictures of their faces and I asked them to pretend like they're singing. We got some funny facial expressions from this class! Then I printed out their pictures and pasted them onto their angel bodies! Now we have angels who are singing around the snowman!

A beautiful 3D Christmas tree that is very easy to make!

I cut out a shape on a piece of white construction paper to make a cone. Then we used the soft pastel to color the tree. I asked the kids to choose any 3 colors they wish to mix together. At first, I was going to tell them to use only green because Christmas trees are supposed to be green, but then I thought they should be able to choose whatever colors they like. In the end, I was right! They turned out great and we got some interesting colors and they all looked great!

Making Candy Cane with Aluminum Foil

This is very easy to make and I did it with my K1 class (3~4yrs). I gave everyone some aluminum foil and asked them to roll it into a stick, then twist the top to make a candy cane. The we decorated it with colored stickers. I put them up on our Christmas tree in the classroom!

Sensory Play (Making a snowman indoor)

This is a fun activity for kids, even for myself. :) I saw this recipe online and we only needed shaving cream and corn starch, but I didn't have corn starch at the time, so I used potato starch instead and it works just as well. I mixed potato starch and shaving cream together and the ratio is about 1:1. After mixing them together, the texture feels like snow! The kids had a lot of fun making snowmen! :)