Preschool Part 4: Christmas Time and Letter L

I am on week 4 of my turn with preschool playgroup and I am loving it!  Only two more weeks after today and then I have to turn my 7 little cuties over to the next mom.

Today we learned about the letter L and for a snack we had...

Christmas "Lights"

 These beauties were made when I used my football shaped cookie cutter for the shape and then used one of my favorite things this month, a box of 6 colored sprinkles shakers.  Z thought they would have looked better if I would have used green for the bulb, but once again, I have a TON of red frosting in squirt bottles left over from Halloween!

 We also made these cute "letters" to Santa.  I saw  craft kit for something similar on Oriental Trading, but decided to make up my own template.  I bought some felt and pieced them together with the preschoolers.  We put a loop of ribbon on the top so that they can hang on the tree, or on a door knob, which is what Buddy did with his.

 And then we attached a ribbon on the back so that we could tie on a letter to Santa!

Preschool, Thanksgiving, and The Letter "J"

This was week 2 of being in charge of Buddy's preschool and this week we were in charge of letter J.  What on earth can tie Thanksgiving in with the letter J?  Go ahead think of a word, I dare you, and no, "jam" doesn't count!

There isn't one, so we had to make our own tie in with Gratitude "Jars" filled with "jellybeans"!

Each preschooler glued the felt pieces together to make their turkeys.

This is what they looked like...

The poem attached says, "Here's my jar of gratitude, And with each jellybean I'll say, Something that I'm thankful for, As I countdown to Thanksgiving Day!"

I wrote it myself, did you know I was such an amazing poet?

The pieces are attached to a baby food jar filled with jellybeans.  The kids are supposed to say something that they are thankful for each time they eat a jellybean.

  It was amazing hearing my own kids count their blessings all week as they munched on jellybeans. 

And when we were done with the craft, we played some "Thankful Bingo".  I printed off bingo cards that I made using a 3x3 table and put pictures of items that 3 year olds would be thankful for.  Each card was different and the first child to fill up their card won a prize.  I don't think that any of these 3-year olds had played bingo before, and now that we're all so good at it, I will be taking them all to play Bingo at Fort Hall Casino next week, where we will also continue our study of Indians!

I got the idea for the turkey jar and the pattern for the pieces here.