Smiling's My Favorite!

...Y'all, we have entered my favorite time of year!!  My most favorite holiday of them all is Christmas.  There just isn't enough time to get in everything I want to...not enough for all of the books I want to share, not enough for all the projects and fun activities...but we pick and choose and hopefully help to deliver some cheer each year to our students.

Last weeks centers consisted of the following....

Art Center (inspired from a pin on pinterest!  A Santa's beard Advent Calendar.  My assistant made her own version of the patterns, and each student cut them out and put them together.  The circles on his beard are a guide to where to put each cotton ball.  It's ordered at random like a calendar with doors.

Each afternoon, my assistant and I put a Glue Dot on the next circle.  When they come in the next morning, after they unpack, the students stick their next cotton ball on the correct number.  We put them all under the board at the front of the room like this...

In the Math Center, just because we wanted them to put together this project (we read the book When Santa Lost his Ho, Ho, Ho, and made a Santa that looks just like him)...it's a Santa puzzle - starts out with the rectangles jumbled up.  The students have to cut them out and glue them into a rectangle on the red paper to put him together.  Then they color him.

Then in our Word Study center we have a Christmas Tree Beginning Sounds activity.  They color the pictures, cut them out, and glue them onto the circle with the beginning sound.  It looks like ornaments on the tree.  They only put the glue at the very top of the circle, so a flap is created that we can check.  I actually created this last year due to a lack of Christmas-cheery educational word study activities (clearly I had yet to discover the world of teacher blogs!).

Happy Sunday, everyone!  :o)