Rockin' December with the letter R

 It's December, and I still have lots of learning planned, but the kiddos are getting very excited about Christmas.  We've been cooped up all week because the ice from last week's storm hasn't melted and it's colder than we Texans are really prepared for.  What to do?  Reindeer activities!

We started the week with a few rounds of Hooves, Belly, Antlers, Nose, sung to the tune of Head, Shoulders Knees and Toes.  We needed Rudolph noses to go with that! 

 Do you love the antlers?  I traced and cut out lots of little hands this week, and we used some on our uppercase R, and turned it into Rudolph too. 

 As you can see, we worked on lots of ornaments for our school Christmas tree.  We will give them all as a gift to our parents, at our Christmas party later this week.

Here we are working on our Pete The Cat ornaments.  Painting is precision work, and we were very careful to make Pete the best we could.  As it says in the story, "Give it your all, give it your all.  At Christmas we give, so give it your all!"

 We also stretched our fine motor skills by cutting and gluing a surprised Rudolph collage, which I found here.  We reviewed circles, triangles and rectangles as we worked, but the scissor skills were the main learning experience for us on this project!

 We did a lot of art and craft projects this week!  Here we are painting stars to assemble into Christmas tree sculptures!  I found this idea via pinterest.

The oldest kiddos were even able to cut out their stars, and help assemble the sculpture with a pipe cleaner and beads.  Everyone enjoyed having a variety of sparkly bits to decorate their trees with!

 We needed to experience the ice too, so I brought some of it inside, and provided droppers, liquid watercolors, and warm water.  We were scientists, and experimented with dropping the liquids into the ice to see what happened.  The warm water melted the ice faster than the paints.  We mixed colors, turned our ice over to see how the paints had seeped through, and got cold fingers!  The kiddos all wanted a long time to explore the ice, and several asked their parents if they could continue ice play at home. 

 As always, we made hand print art for the letter of the week.  Here are some samples, and you can see more samples of our artwork at www.artsonia.com  For other hand and foot print art ideas, and the sources for them, please check out my Handprint Alphabet board on pinterest.

 A review of this week wouldn't be complete without mentioning the Christmas junk craft box.  The kiddos don't think it is a junk box at all, as it is filled with various left over craft treasures for them to use however they wish.  It always amazes me the things adults will throw away, which could just as easily fascinate a child first.  Kids are very inventive and creative!

Our week concluded with a viewing of Polar Express, complete with pajamas and lots of trains to play with.

Next week, letter S!