christmas crafts

since i knew we would be busy in december, we didn't do a letter of the month but did do a few christmas related crafts instead.

we learned about the poinsettia plant and found lots of them at the grocery store.  we then read the legend of the poinsettia and made a poinsettia fan found here.  the fan was an excellent accessory used while she danced to christmas music.

we then moved on to creating a christmas lapbook using most of the content from this christmas tot pack.  if you're not familiar with lapbooks a basic tutorial can be found here.  another great resource for lapbook ideas/inspiration is the member forum from lapbook lessons.  there are plenty of other lapbook resources out there.  just google "lapbook" or "lapbook tutorial."  i am in love with lapbooks ever since i first discovered them.  what a great learning tool for kids of all ages.  even ty was intrigued with the lapbook concept.  personally, i think he would be one to benefit using lapbooks as a learning tool, but they don't do that at his school.

we used the happy birthday J is for jesus for the cover, and picked out a few other printables to put in the lapbook.  i broke down the activities to span over the course of a week so that we didn't feel rushed to get it all done in one day. 

we also added a few st. nicholas related items to the lapbook.  since we brought ol' st. nick into the christmas celebration this year, it was important to us that she understands (or at least is introduced to) the history behind santa claus (without losing the "magic") so that he does not become the central focus of our chirstmas celebration (i will not go into this too much, though it was briefly addressed here).  we visited the st. nicholas center and read a couple of stories from there (i would recommend pre-reading them first to make sure they're appropriate for your kids).  then we printed out the st. nicholas day poem and the paper doll printable to complete the lapbook.

like some of the sites i linked to, i do recommend printing out the activities on cardstock or laminating them so that they're more durable.  the activities printed from the first lapbook we made were done on regular paper and it didn't have that lasting power (though it's still being used).  this lapbook was a hit not only with emma (3 years) but with ty (12 years) and our neighbor friend, sam (5 years).