School Room Christmas Tree

My boys LOVE to decorate the Christmas tree. So, I set one up in their school room that they can decorate as often as they like!

The little tree was only $2.50 from the dollar section at Target.

Frosty on the Cork Board

Several months back, we started using the cork board to make art. We love it for two reasons:

1. Fine motor workout. The act of pushing the pins into the board requires some strength. 
2. Successful creativity. The children can create a beautiful display without having to pick up a writing utensil or paint brush. 

Last month we created a display of fall leaves. This month we used scraps of felt and foam to create snowflakes and Frosty the Snowman. It was fun to sing the song as we made the display, thinking about whether our snowman had all the correct parts...a corncob pipe, a button nose, two eyes made out of coal. 

Wrapping Christmas Presents

When I saw that our friends at Sunrise Learning Lab were learning to wrap presents during school time, I was inspired to try it myself.

I knew Big Brother would love it. Turns out he did love it! It wasn't coming easily, but he was very engaged and tried very hard. There are so many skills being practiced with this activity. Although Little Brother wasn't too interested in wrapping the presents, he loved opening them....even if they were empty! 

Be sure to check out Sunrise Learning Lab's post, On Our Shelves: December Activities. My Montessori Journey also had a great post about Gift Wrapping Work.

Our Gingerbread House Experience: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

I've always had a vision of making a gingerbread house with my children....from scratch. Well, I knew that wasn't going to happen this year.
I figured it was worth $10 and a little bit of compromising to buy a kit from Target and have some semblance of my original vision.

Overall, it was fun. However, I'm not sure my kids were quite ready for this project. Here are my thoughts on the good and the bad of our experience.

The gingerbread house itself....well, it was just plain ugly!!

Seriously, it was not structurally sound, and the house fell to pieces not long after we built it.

GOOD

• The children were beyond excited to make a house out of candy and cookies. That alone made the experience worth it.
• The directions said to squeeze the frosting around in the bag before using it. It was pretty thick, so it was a good hand-strengthening exercise.
• Putting all the candy on the house was a good fine-motor activity and was somewhat creative.
• We have a number of books that mention gingerbread houses. Now the boys have a concrete experience to fit together with these stories. 

BAD

• This kit was filled with filled with artificial flavors, artificial colors, and all sorts of other yucky stuff. Not to mention insane amounts of sugar.
• It was difficult for the children to control themselves. I'd say at least 25% of the candy never made it to the construction site. It's possible the house may have been licked a few times.
• Most of the project was too difficult for small children. I did most of it myself.
• It seemed wasteful. We certainly weren't going to eat the whole thing (it wouldn't have tasted good anyway). If we left it out, it would have attracted bugs. We ended up throwing it out the next day. 

I would definitely like to try this project again when the children are older and we have better quality building materials. Perhaps I can also get some advice from a structural engineer. ☺

Christmas Playdough

I made play dough for the first time. What a great experience!  I used the recipe from My Montessori Journey, and drew lots of inspiration from all the fabulous play dough ideas presented on Counting Coconuts.

It didn't take long to make the dough (about 10 minutes or so). I added glitter, lots of green food coloring, a little cinnamon and a lot of vanilla. The final result was soft, sparkly and aromatic....so much better than anything you could buy at the store.

I knew it was worth the extra effort to make it when, after playing with the dough in complete silence for several minutes, Big Brother said, "mmmmm....I love the way this smells! It smells like frosting!"

On the other hand, Big Brother has also said several times, "play dough is not suppose to be shiny." Sensory overload? Perhaps I'll leave out the glitter next time.

Here are some pictures from our play dough adventures. We made Christmas trees!

• Our "ornaments" were made by cutting apart old Mardi Gras beads. It was a great cutting exercise and fine motor activity.
• After we were done making Christmas trees, we hid the ornaments in the dough and made a game out of finding them. This is a great game for strengthening those hand muscles.
• Little Brother also had fun practicing his counting. How many ornaments did we hide? How many are still left?