Schooling parents to support their children, one lesson at a time.
As I pulled out my Advent Calendar with daily Scripture verses about the anticipation and birth of Jesus, I thought of so many other things that I wanted to do to get ready for Jesus’ party that we all know of as our Christmas Celebration.
So, I made an activity calendar and thought y’all might want to jump on board and remember WHO this month is REALLY all about.
I really like to display our seasonal arts and crafts on the playroom wall, and I have always loved to display and talk about a Santa Countdown.
It only made sense to me to countdown on Santa’s beard…So, I made it happen.
I decided to post it tonight so that you could get a head start if you wanted to.
I will be posting a printable EVERY day until Christmas so you will have lots you can do with your kiddos.
If you just want this printable it is only $1 HERE, but my membership is only a one time payment of $5 and I have TONS of resources so you may want to join instead. 😉
I am going to talk to Sean Patrick tomorrow morning about this and here is how the conversation will start:
“Look at this cute Santa picture. What do you think about him? What do you notice? (Wait for him to notice numbers) We are going to use the numbers to tell us how many days there are until Santa comes. We will cover up one number each day until we fill his beard. When his beard is full that will mean that it is time to bake cookies for Santa! It will be a calendar countdown! So lets cover up the first number – this is twenty-four (a two and a four).”
I plan to let Sean Patrick fill one circle each day with dot paint first and then glue a cotton ball on each number as we countdown.
And here is what it might look like when it is time to bake cookies for Santa:
I notice that “coloring pages” are still all the rage, and I actually think so much great conversation and bonding can take place coloring with your kids so I am probably in that mix. My kids and I love to color together.
But, I also like to make templates that I can use for multiple uses.
So, I made a simple but useful and free Pilgrim Hat Activity that I am posting for ALL my TMT followers.
You can use this to talk about who attended the First Thanksgiving.
You can use this to talk about food that we typically eat at Thanksgiving.
Or you can use this to talk about thankfulness of course!
We decided to break out the puff paint and glitter for this one. We ended up finger-painting the globs of puff paint. We had fun, and we talked about the Pilgrims. I reminded him of his school’s Thanksgiving Feast and the Pilgrims costume to make an association. At one point I had to hide the “sugar,” my one year old’s name for glitter, but other than that it was a winner!
Simple, but timely right?
Today, I am sharing a template with you so that your little one can make a personalized headdress.
I always loved doing holiday crafts as a kid, so I am trying to keep that tradition going!
I got this craft idea when I went to my son’s Thanksgiving Feast.
The kids wore headdresses and one class had Native American nicknames written on their headbands, but I thought it would be cute to try it on the feathers.
I thought, I could do that. And as you may know, I like reproducible activities.
So, I made this template for you.
The feathers have upper case letters, lower case letters, and numbers so there are lots of directions you can take this craft.
[Click HERE to become a member and get unlimited access to ALL The Mommy Teacher Printables including this one!
OR CLICK HERE to purchase this Thanksgiving printable individually from my TeachersPayTeachers Store.]
When I did this at home:
My goal today was simply to get Sean Patrick to put the letters of his name in order after I scrambled them up, and give him a fun accessory to wear to go with all of his little Indian songs he has learned.
So, I scrambled them up and asked him to find the letters in his name. He found S, then ‘e,’ then ‘a,’ then ‘n,’ etc., colored them, and then I taped them onto his headband that I cut from a brown paper bag..
You Could:
1) Use this as a number order activity or assessment by teaching your little one to put the feathers in order from 0-9 and then mix the feathers up and see if your little one can put them in order himself.
2) Let your kiddos come up with names for their stuffed animals, put small feather headbands on stuffed animals heads (use a print setting that prints multiple pages at onto one sheet of paper to print small feathers).
3) Place paper feathers on the inside of construction paper to give it a pop of color if you don’t print them onto colored paper or if you children don’t color them in much.
4) Or, come up with something original and share it on The Mommy Teacher Facebook Page or as a Mommy Teacher Spotlight because we are always looking for more ideas to do and to share!
A creative mommy-teacher friend of mine put her own twist on this activity, and I love it! Had to share:
I was itching to do some q-tip painting with the kids but I didn’t feel like googling to find a good turkey art template.
So,
I made three turkey art templates –
1) I made a plain template that you can color, decorate with feathers, glue and glitter, etc. Or, just use any other material you have in your house that you don’t have to shop for.
2) The next template is a turkey that is easy to fill with larger circular materials like pom poms (cotton balls), dot paint, big circle stickers, etc.
3. And, my inspiration for making these… the turkey with feathers perfect for painting with q-tips. Small incentive stickers also fit in these circles if you want to use it more that once!
[Click HERE to become a member to get unlimited access to ALL The Mommy Teacher Printables including this one!
OR CLICK HERE to purchase these Turkey Templates individually from my TeachersPayTeachers Store.]
And here is what some of our time looked/sounded like:
First, I asked Sean Patrick which turkey he wanted to paint first. He told me that he wanted to paint with dot paint first.
So, we put the template with the large circles in front of us first. He picked “blue” paint and I encouraged him to fill in the circles on each tail feather, one at a time. I demonstrated how he could do this on my template in front of me quickly.
(Notice we have already discussed colors, shapes, parts of a turkey, and one-to-one correspondence; your children are learning even when you don’t realize it).
Then, I asked him questions like “How many more do you have left to fill your whole turkey?” “Can you find any feathers that have three circles?” “Which feather has the most circles?” And “What do you think this turkey would say about his new blue tail feathers?” (That last question was just for fun but it gets him thinking outside the box.”
Before moving on to the next template, I encouraged him to color in the other parts of the turkey so he learned/reinforced (beak, wattle, feet, feathers, wings, and I had to google “snood” – the part on top of the head – because I had no clue what it was called).
For the q-tip painting we worked on patterns. I always treat patterns as if I have never taught him about what they are by saying something like, “Oooooooh let’s make a pattern. A pattern is something that repeats itself over and over and over and over and over again.”
“If mommy makes a red and orange pattern I would sing my song red-orange-red-orange-red-orange the whole way through so that I don’t forget my pattern or what comes next.”
If he doesn’t want to do a pattern I don’t stress about it…. this is his time to express himself. I’m just close enough to build on what he is learning.
Finally we did some finger painting to experience the sensory exploration of smearing paint all over, and the science exploration of seeing colors mix together.
Most importantly, we had fun! Isn’t that what it is really about after all?
