Due to kiddies being sick this week, Preschool Co-op was only held one day, so today’s post is more of a “round-up” of academic Christmas themed ideas.

Theme: Christmas

Peppermint Rice Sensory Play – Growing a Jeweled Rose made a fun sensory bin using peppermint scented red and green rice as a base.

Festive Pretend Play Props – Although I think these cute Christmas props were originally designed to be photo props, I know they’d be fun for pretend play as well.  From babble.com.

Christmas Scented Sensory Cards – This is an idea from A Little Learning for Two.  Cardboard strips were used with little zip top baggies, like those you might purchase at a craft store to beads and such.  Fill the baggie with your scent, label it…and check out the original blog to discover the game that went along with it.

Christmas Card Mobile – What a fun way to display all those Christmas cards received each year!  Scraps of wrapping paper and coloring pages can be used as well.  Not to mention that this can be turned into a wonderful science activity about balance!  From TLC Family.

Christmas Themed Books

These are some of our favorite Christmas themed books.

Reading

Phonemic Awareness Skills – This week students learned to divide words between their onset and rime.  Monosyllabic words can be split into two parts: onset (before the vowel) and rime (the vowel and after).  For example: dance can be split into /d/ (onset) and /ance/ (rime).  Swim can be split into /sw/ (onset) and /im/ (rime).

Phonics: Letter Ii – Students learned to identify the letter Ii and it’s sound (short sound only).  Printed and laminated were a few l color photos beginning with the /i/ sound.  Examples: igloo, iguana, inch, infant (great vocabulary building this week!)  Students practiced saying each picture name, emphasizing the /i/ sound at the beginning.

Phonics: Initial Sound Matching – Once students had learned the new letter and it’s sound, they played a “listening” game.   The teacher said a word, and the students had to hold up a letter Ii card if the word began with /i/.  Students practiced identifying if a word began with the /i/ sound or with another sound.

Phonics: Medial Sound Matching – Students then practiced listening for the short /i/ sound in the middle of a word, such as in fit or pin.

Introduction to Decoding – Now that the students have learned a vowel, they could learn some basic decoding.  The teacher began by setting out a card with the letter i on it.  She asked for the sound.  (/i/). Then she set out the letter t and asked for the sound (/t/).  Then they blended the sounds together to say the word “it”.  The last step was to add consonants at the beginning to form cvc words, like sit and pit.

Math

One to One Correspondence – This tree decorating activity comes from Mrs. Creech’s Busy Bees.  Students roll dice to determine the number of pom poms to decorate the tree.  this also doubles as an excellent writing activity for all the fine motor practice.

One to One Correspondence – To the Lesson shares this felt mitten and snowflake counting activity.

Patterning – This is also another great writing activity as is helps develop fine motor skills!  String holiday colored pony beads onto pipe cleaners in patterns to make candy canes.  From The Fountain Avenue Kitchen.

Graphing – Kids always love dice a graph games.  Try this one from Elizabeth at Teachers Pay Teachers…(or make your own with some holiday stickers!)

Coming Next Week

Due to the upcoming holiday, there will be no post next week.  Preschool Co-op will resume the first week of January.  Merry Christmas!