3 Tuesdays till Christmas

I love Christmas time. I love the carols, the cooking and the decorating. I even love the shopping up to a point. Christmas in the classroom is a very happy and joyous time as well. This week the children all wanted to explore the Christmas sensory tray, although I had to explain that the green cones were trees and not party hats waiting for decorations.I did have a laugh when another child turned the tree over, filled it with pebbles and called "Cheers" to his friend.

Mirrors, pebbles, rice, cotton wool, Christmas shapes, little Christmas bears, Santa and Rudolph.

Rudolph made from a gum-nut, a bead and some twig antlers. Very cute!

Clay decorations:

Each child was given a ball of clay to roll out and then they chose buttons, cotton reels, shells or lace etc to make prints in their clay. They chose a Christmas cutter and cut out their decoration.

Some of the finished products - Before being fired in the kiln.

After being fired the children either painted with clear varnish or glitter varnish.

A beautiful Christmas ornament for the family to keep and cherish.

The light table:

I was given these green money boxes which I transformed into a Christmas counting and fine motor activity. The children enjoyed filling the money boxes with Christmas coins.

Enjoy your Tuesday...

4 Tuesdays till Christmas

There were squeals of delight as the children walked through the door and saw the first display of Christmas lights in the classroom. I know it is early but as we break up in only a few weeks we needed to start out Christmas activities.


The scent of the cinnamon playdough filled the classroom with a delicious fragrance. The children used the cinnamon playdough to create gingerbread men and decorated them with an assortment of buttons and eyes. These were displayed proudly on beautiful doilies and plates.

On the light table this week the children made antlers for Rudolph and the other eight reindeer and counted out peg legs to go on every one. This was a lot of counting!

I love Comet's antlers

We made some Christmas wrapping paper by printing lovely yellow stars on large sheets of paper.

I hope you visit next Tuesday to see loads more Christmas activities...

Happy Tuesday

Traffic on Tuesday

The playdough table was a favourite spot with everyone today. I made some roads out of black rubbish bags and stuck them to the table. I used white tape to mark the centre lines and added cardboard tubes with recycled green material to make trees and lots of coloured bottle tops to use as wheels. Beautiful purple playdough was then used to create a variety of vehicles. The children used wooden pegs and markers to make people to drive in our cars and buses. They loved this activity and created soo many different play situations. The only problem they had was working out how to physically move the playdough buses filled with passengers along the road.

Before the children arrived.

Some lovely passengers!

A bus in the woods.

The trees that were no longer needed at the playdough table became princesses in the block area.

Week 2 of our beans and sprouts. We are sending them home now so that they can continue growing them at home.

A Little More Nature on Tueaday

It was very exciting this morning to see our beans, sprouts and carrots all growing so well. Not as fast as Jack and the Beanstalk but fast enough to create a lot of delight. Today I put out some brown paper, leaves, twigs, pebbles and gumnuts with some paint and cotton buds. I gave no instruction to the children and the first to the table didn't paint, but rather used the nuts and pebbles as characters and asked each other "Who do you want to be?" The next children to the table painted on the paper and then others mixed the colours and painted with sticks and also cotton buds. We realised that pebbles become VERY slippery when covered in a layer of paint. We are going to keep our creations to use for a variety of different things, from counting, sorting and for props in the block area.

   

Nuts, leaves, pebbles and sticks.

The finished products. Now we can use them in a number of different play and learning situations.

Our sprouts: Week 1

Our beans: Week 1

We had a good look at the parts of our bean and painted it.

A variety of insects on the light table to sort and investigate.

Yellow playdough, a variety of leaves, nuts and sticks.

Look at our playdough creations!

Discovery tray with pebbles, plants, large insects and lawn. The children loved playing with these and it stimulated a lot of play. The plants looked a little worse for wear after the giant  insects had landed on them several times!

Happy Tuesday!