Christmas Stations and Crafts

Hey all!

So, it's been a while. I now teach kindergarten and boy is it busy! It is so much different than second grade but I love how excited my kids are about learning their letters, sounds, and beginning to read!  Unfortunately I haven't figured out how to keep BUILD going in K, but I am going to work on it over the summer.  In my new district, we are lucky enough to have iPads and laptops as a station with programs that work at each individual kids speed (ding ding ding differentiation!), so there is always something to do throughout the day!


Here are some links to freebies we have been doing, sorry if it is overload but the more the merrier!

TONS of sight words activities: cut and paste, rainbow write, etc.  This site is amazing! I am using one group of words per week since there are multiple activities for each set of words.

Sight word games: Egg flip and gum balls Okay, confession. I haven't actually used these yet BUT they have been ready to go for a few months…so it will be soon!

Number sense to 5-- I received this from a workshop and will have to play around with some sites, but it should be a freebie somewhere- stay tuned!

Snowman counting (1:1)-- Okay the link shows the general idea, I just made it up at lunch one day…. see pics below! The kids loved it. For a challenge, they placed two hats on the head and had to add or count on.

Slowly rewinding to Christmas….

Needs and Wants stockings-- I printed two copies and wrote "needs" and "wants" on the cuff.  We collected kid friendly magazines and the kids got to sort out pictures of needs and wants. They had SO much fun with this!

Christmas Treat Bags- Okay.. I am obsessed with how these turned out!!! Love, love, love! And SO easy!  I just bought the regular bags of green and red milk chocolate M&M's and put them in snack sized baggies.  I went through 4 bags for 25 kids.

CRAFTS

I ran an after school craft program this year and it is definitely my favorite craft I've done.

Here's what you need:
Wooden frames from Michaels (only $1 each!)
Cardstock (I used tan/beige)
Brown paint (kid friendly)
Googley eyes
Red ball noses
a camera!

The picture frames from Michaels come with a little wooden stick to stand it up. I had the kids paint the back first, then I inserted the stick and flipped it to the front so they could finish painting.

While the frames were drying, I took pictures of the kids with a green paper background and sent the pictures straight to CVS.

Did I mention this craft only took one hour?!

Once dried, students worked on gluing the eyes and nose while I ran around painting each students hands brown.  They planted their hands on a sheet of card stock and cut around to make it look like antlers.  This definitely took some assistance for the younger kids in the class.

I let these dry over night, picked up the pictures, and sent them home the next day.  I let the students use regular glue so that they were able to do the project on their own… however if you are doing this at home I HIGHLY suggest hot glue.  We had lots of pieces fall off.

Non-school related: Love this stocking!  I got the plaid stocking from Target, the burlap at Michaels, and the letter from a craft fair but I am sure you can find them anywhere.

I tied the bow FIRST.  I found a few different tutorials on Pinterest, then I hot glued it around the stocking. Then, the letter had a very thin string attached to it so I slipped that around the bow so that it would blend in and added a little more glue. Simple and super cute!

**Notice the doggy bagel "hiding" near the stocking. That would be our puppy child, Riley… who just hides all of her treats.

I bought the "Ho Ho Ho" sign from Etsy and it matched perfectly.

What would I do without Pinterest and Etsy?

Thanks for stopping by!