Teaching Preschool and PreK during Christmastime is a double-edged sword…They are anxious, sensitive, full of energy, and tired…but they are also excited, happy, awed, and so full of the Christmas spirit that they carry magic with them wherever they go.
My children are grown (23 & 20) and while Christmas will always be magical, it has lost that childlike fascination with EVERYTHING Christmas-y. I am so grateful that I get to spend my days with little children. I get to feel that magic each day. I get to watch them light up when they tell me what they hope Santa will bring them, when they tell me where their silly elf has hidden that day, and when they talk about how magnificent their Christmas tree is! I see in their eyes my children at that age, and even myself. I love it so much.
I like to make our classroom as magical as I can. Every year on December the first and elf comes to visit our class. He stays every day and moves around to keep a good close eye on the kids. He is the first thing they look for when they walk in the room…it never fails, but at leas once during the season he just really loves a particular spot and stays there an extra day! (LOL)
This week we will be doing a craft that I first did last year when I was just tired of doing the same old thing. I wanted to make a wreath that would add some Christmas to our room and the kids could take home and decorate their own space when we were done with school for the break.
I love doing paper plate crafts, and we have a TON of them at our school, so I hatched a plan!
We cut out the inside circle of a cheap paper plate. This was done by the teachers of course! Then, we let the kids paint the plate all over with green washable paint-I let my kids be very liberal with the paint. We laid in on pretty thick. Then we gave the kids green glitter shakers and sparkly bits-we have jars of sequins and sparkly shapes, so does any craft store worth it’s salt-and we let them stick sparkles and shake glitter to their heart’s content! They had a BLAST! Was it messy? Of course it was…but that is what early childhood is all about!
As a finishing touch we ties some red yarn around the top when they were dry. We ties just enough so the wreaths could hang nicely.
