Christmas in our room!

Okay,
I made a fireplace! ;) I bought some brick paper at Mardels, the heavy kind. I used our puppet stage and stapled it on, hope it stays!! Then I used black paper and cut yellow flames. My afternoon kids made some stockings today to go around it. They LOVED it!! My coteacher made gingerbread smelling playdough, very fun!! Hope you are enjoying your first few days of Christmas in the classroom! It's going to fly by, so hold on to your Santa hat!!!

You Can't Catch Me!!!

It's time for the Gingerbread man!! This is another one of my favorite activities in K! We'll make a big Gingerbread man and hope he doesn't run away! ;)
Christmas begins in our classroom on Mon. I know the calendar still says November, but we only have 3 weeks of Christmas fun, so we've gotta get going! As I've said before, check out the Jan Brett web site for a very yummy gingerbread recipe. We usually double it to have enough for our big class. We'll decorate him with candy left over from the teepee treats. I usually sprinkle some crubs on the floor and leave the oven door open so it looks like he crumbled a bit as he runs away. We go all over the school looking for him! It's always such fun! Another craft we'll be doing with the gingerbread theme is a construction paper gb man and decorate him with real candy, again teepee treat left overs! We'll also be reading Jan Brett's Gingerbread Baby and Gingerbread Friends along with other Gingerbread variations this week. You have to check out The Gingerbread Girl book, too cute!!


My co-teacher and I changed out the room on Tues. At our school we have inservice the week of Thanksgiving with no kiddos. Personally I'd rather be teaching. I think I have a bit of ADHD and really have trouble sitting or working on tasks that don't involve movement. Guess that's why I teach K, huh!? ;) So, we were able to take a break from our sitting typing tasks and work on room decore.
We took down the teepee and added a manger in dress-up. I'm going to get some blue and brown fabric and let the kids dress as Mary and Joseph. I also have several fun Christmas hats and headbands with Christmas things on them for the kiddos to dress up too. Housekeeping is going to be a Gingerbread sweet shop. We took out all the healthy food and left cookies, cupcakes, and some icecream stuff I found at the target $ spot for our shop. A few years ago I found a gingerbread man apron and hat at Kohls. I saw the apron the other day for $8.99, so they still have it. It's too cute, and they love to wear it! Waste not want not, right! The left over "indian bead" pasta is going to be ornaments on a construction paper Christmas tree in crafts. Our table toys will be the Little People Nativity set, always fun.

Two more of my favorite things for this month, What God Wants for Christmas, family life today, and One Wintry Night by Ruth Bell Grahm. We'll begin the boxes from What God Wants for Christmas on Dec. 1. As we open each box, we will put the piece under the Christmas tree. At the end we will have the Nativity and see that God wants us! One Wintry Night is a beautiful story about how God rescued us! As I've said before, a must read this time of year!

More to come in the coming weeks! This really is the MOST wonderful time of the year!

Feast Pictures!!

Turkey Cookies and Amber Lamb the Pilgrim

This is such a busy month in K! We have been working every day on something new. ;)

Yesterday we made Turkey cookies. They turned out very cute! You use fudge stripes and nutter butter cookies, icing, candy corn, and twizzlers. "Glue" the nutterbutter down with icing onto the fudge stripe cookie. Put the nutter butter down far enough so you will have enough room for your candy corn feathers. Then put a candy corn beak on the face and a red twizzler waddle next to it. Then use 4-5 pieces of candy corn for the feathers along the back. they turned out cute. You can also use mini m and ms for the eyes if you'd like. We are saving them for Friday's feast. Just a note~ candy corn disappears after Halloween, so stock up early if you want it for something. I had to learn the hard way!!

Tomorrow we are making mini corn muffins and Monday we made butter. I get the jiffy corn muffin mix and follow the directions. For the butter, we put heavy cream in a jar and we all had a turn to shake it up! It was fun watching it turn into butter! Thursday we are going to make mini pumpkin pies. I buy the pumpkin pie mix and just follow the directions. I don't bake it in the pie shell, I put it in a 9 x 13 pan. We'll chill it and on Friday we'll scoop it into mini crusts and top with whipped cream. Then Friday morning before our feast we'll make cranberry punch. I use cranberry juice, vanilla ice cream, and 7-up. It turned out really yummy last year.

I've included a picture of Amber Lamb the Pilgrim for you. Amber Lamb comes each week to help us learn our Bible lesson. She has a heart you can put things in, so she "hides" things in her heart. These past few weeks we've been discussing God's provision for the Pilgrims and Thankfulness our character trait for the month. If you've never read Squanto, the Miracle of Thanksgiving, I encourage you to read it this time of year. I believe Family Life puts it out. It's the wonderful story of how God prepared Squanto to be a helper to the Pilgrims! This week we'll be discussing how God prepared the way for the Pilgrims as they followed His call to head to America.

May your Thanksgiving time at school and at home be blessed!

Indian Bead Necklace (pasta) and ice cream cone tee-pees!

My fingers are multi colored right now. Just finished dying the pasta for our Indian necklaces! It's probably about 1/4 of a cup of rubbing alcohol not a 1/2. Should have written that down last year!! Oh, well, fly by the seat of our pants, LOL! Just a note, the wagon wheel pasta really takes the color the best. Also, tried purple again this year and it still turned out sort of blackish. Hm... Anyone out there have a good idea for purple? ;) Tomorrow lots of good fine motor lacing!! We did the ice cream cone teepees too. You really need to make the powdered sugar mixture thick. I made the kiddos really goop it on! ;) Next week I'll "glue" their names on the cones for their place card.

Fun times!!