Letter S is Stunning in the Spotlight

 It's stunning, it's super, it's spectacular, it's...

...the letter Ss!  Timed just right for December and Santa, S is a smash hit every year!

It's all too obvious, but S for Santa really is a favorite.  With plenty of Christmas and Santa crafts and activities available, it's easy to find some that appeal to you and your students.  Many people schedule a visit with or to the jolly old elf, and we're no exception, but that's not your only option!

My big event to start our letter Ss week is to have the children dress up and pretend to be Santa.  I didn't go buy an expensive Santa costume - you can put one together pretty easily with just a little creativity!  For my costume I found a larger kids shirt and elastic waist pants at a resale store.  I sewed on some white fleece around the arms, bottom of the shirt and pant legs, added my own snow boots and black belt, a cheap Santa hat.... but what to do about a beard?  I found a piece of white fake fur, and just tucked it into the hat!  Ta-da!  Lots of little Santas!  Each child had a turn to put on the costume for a photo, which we put in our alphabet photo albums.  While we were taking turns putting on the costume we sang holiday songs - you could also add ringing bells in time with the music to keep little hands happily occupied while waiting for a turn.

We also make hand print Santas, which we print onto our large letter S craft.  You'll need red, white, and skin toned paint.  If you look at the Santa print in the picture above, you can see the center of the palm is Santas face, the fingers and around the edge of the hand is white for hair, and the thumb and face of the hand is his red hat.  It's easy, fun, and painting little hands is a lovely sensory experience and an opportunity to talk about the cool, slippery paint, the tickly sensation, and to introduce great vocabulary words about the experience!

You know I like to offer the children options for their hand prints - for one thing, not everyone celebrates Christmas and Santa, and another reason is that children so seldom have a say in things that having a choice helps them feel powerful - and more likely to cooperate when I can't give them choices.  

One of the other options is to paint snails - and this one isn't so easy to look at and understand, so I'll explain.  The brown part of our snails is made by painting the curved outer edge of our hands, from the tip of the pinky finger down to the fleshy part by our wrists.  We use a second color to paint the same area but with our hands fisted, and that sort of circular fist print makes the snail's shell.  When it's dry the children can use markers to add the swirl in the shell and stems for wiggle eyes.  (If you haven't taken a close look at a snail with your child, this is an excellent time to do so, so they know what they're trying to draw!)

Our other hand print option is to make a swan.  For this one we created the background first - blue for a pond, green for the plants surrounding it.  I like to offer the children tissue paper to add details - it's very inexpensive (I save it after gift giving occasions), and is fun and easy to tear.  Tearing is a great fine motor workout, so we're developing little fingers with a recycled material while encouraging artistic expression and learning our letters.... is that a win-win-win-win? Why yes it is!  Once our background is complete we make a white hand print for the swan's body and neck, then the children add a little more neck and a head.  As always, we add final details when the paint is dry.

To continue the Christmas theme learning, I created a Christmas patterning center.  With 4 AB, 4 ABC and 4 AAB / ABB patterns to continue, there's something just right for each child.  I seldom use worksheets with preschool children, but for those who do, and for slightly older children, I included 15 differentiated cut and paste activities. It's a fun way to bring some math to our seasonal learning!

If you do letter Ss in December, or at least during the winter, you may have another easily available, free, fun material on hand - SNOW!

Of course you're going to spend time outside in it, but there are also going to be inside times you want to make engaging, and painting on snow is a HUGE hit!  We simply filled pie pans with snow, then let the children use droppers to add water color paints to their tray of snow.  It's awesome to see how the color quickly leaches down through the snow, leaving a lightly colored area where the paint was.  This is a fun time to practice mixing colors - because your children are going to do it anyway!  If you offer primary colors (red, blue, yellow) someone will notice the combinations that result in secondary colors (purple, orange, green).  If not, you can act surprised to find green snow when you didn't offer green paint, and ask the child(ren) how they made it.  They'll figure it out and proudly tell you all about it!

Be prepared for this activity to last much longer than you think it will.  Also be prepared for large puddles of paint water - have old towels on hand ready for the inevitable cleanup.  The first time I offered this activity it lasted 2 hours, and older siblings who were arriving with parents at pick-up time joined in and stayed to play.  Thank goodness there's plenty more snow outside and you can easily refresh their snow over and over again!

If your little ones are super excited about snow, and want to know more, check out this snowy learning packet!

The non-fiction booklet explains how snow forms - at a level little ones can understand.  It's fun to graph their favorite snowy activities, and to measure with snowflakes.  Our favorite is probably using pattern blocks to create symmetrical snow like creations.  These are all easy ways to tie in science and math learning along with our letter study!

I haven't talked about our lowercase S at all yet!  S looks like a snake to me, so I like to read a book about a snake (my go-to is Keith Baker's Hide and Snake), then we make our own snakes.  The snake in the book we read has lovely patterns on it, so it's a natural step for the children to make patterns on their snakes too!  We do this with colorful foam shapes - and I have an important tip to make this go smoothly: have the child choose 2 or 3 shapes ahead of time, and find multiples pieces of each.  If they want small yellow triangles and big pink circles, they should find at least 5-8 of each BEFORE the glue comes out.  Put all the other shapes away out of sight.  It's so very hard to make a pattern when there are a kazillion brightly colored pretty shapes in front of you - who can choose?!  Trust me on this one, I did this craft with groups of children for about 15 years... and have learned from the children.  :-)  Once you have just the needed pieces in front of you, get out the glue, and help your little one say the pattern outloud, pausing expectantly at the end so they'll fill in the next shape: "Red, blue, red, blue, red...?"

As I said before, not everyone celebrates Christmas, and even if all of your students do, it's important to include other cultures and ways of doing things, because in our great big world there are many right ways of doing things!  December is the season for Bodhi Day, Hannukah, Kwanza, Omisoka (New Year's Eve), Boxing Day, winter soltice, Yalda and more!  Both Bodhi Day (December 8) and Hannukah (sunset December 10 - 18) will be celebrated this coming week.

To my friends who are celebrating - Happy Hannukah, and blessed Bodhi Day. 

Much love,

Paula