Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! As we look forward to December I thought I would share some Christmas ideas to help plan for the upcoming month. You know how I love to pair adapted books with crafts….so here is what I did with my books for this month. The set of Christmas adapted books includes “Let’s Build a Gingerbread House!”, “Where is the Present?”, and “What is Santa Doing?”
“Let’s Build a Gingerbread House!” paired with a Gingerbread Craft. “Let’s Build a Gingerbread House!” focuses on color concepts, number concepts, and different candy items. For this book the students have to find the correct color and candy item and attach the correct number of those items onto the gingerbread house. For example, “put 3 purple hearts on the gingerbread house.” The student have to find the purple hearts and add 3 hearts onto the house.
After you read the book you can make different gingerbread people to continue working on following directions involving color and number concepts. Cut out gingerbread people. Have the student request 2 eyes and 1 mouth. The mouth is just a short piece of red yarn.
Add 3 pompoms on the belly. You can give the student directions on which color pompoms to select or they can request the colors they want. Add some glitter around the arms and legs and you are finished!
“Where is the Present?” paired with a Pattern Wreath. “Where is the Present?” targets the prepositional concepts “above”, “under”, “beside”, and “on”. This is great to work on these different prepositional concepts and target some seasonal vocabulary terms. You can also have your students match the correct present on each page to work on visually discriminating between all the different style presents.
To make the pattern wreaths I just took a paper plate and cut the middle out of the plate and then punched a hole at the top. Then I had the students paint the outside of the paper plate green. The students needed to request plate, green paint, and paintbrush before they could start painting.
After the students finished painting they picked out 2 different color cotton balls. I had the students count out 5 cotton balls for each color. Then the students line up the cotton balls in the ABAB pattern. After gluing on the cotton balls we attached a pipe cleaner on the top. Once the wreaths dry you can hang them up! They turned out really cute!!!!
“What is Santa Doing?” paired with making Santa Hands! “What is Santa Doing?” focuses on the students identifying different action verbs which describe the Santa picture. For this book the students have to listen to what Santa is doing such as “dancing to music” and find the correct Santa picture to match the description.
We made these Santa faces as a follow-up craft to pair with the book. First you trace your students’ hands. After you trace your students’ hands, help them cut out their hands. We traced the outline of the thumb and top part of hand to cut out and add to the top for Santa’s hat. Then add 2 eyes and a nose.
Next have the students count out 9 cotton balls to add on the face. One cotton ball for the end of Santa’s hat and then 2 cotton balls for each finger. I put dots on where the student should add the glue and cotton balls.
You can also read the book “There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bell!” with your students. Click here for a FREE copy of the book pictures and questions – There was an Old Lady – Bell
If you want more information about how to use these visual and questions with the book click the link – There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed A Bell and Reindeer Craft!
I paired this book with a reindeer craft. Trace and cut out your students’ hands. Add an eye, nose, and decorate!
Here is a Christmas Identification Board to use with your students. You can work on your students identifying pictures and following directions to color the pictures different colors. Click here if you want a free copy of this activity – Christmas Identification Board
Christmas Cones – A fun and delicious treat. You can do this with store bought frosting but I had my students make the frosting! If you want a free copy of my frosting recipe click here – holiday-frosting
The recipe is simple but my students always have fun following a recipe and cooking in speech.
I had my students take turns adding all the ingredients and using the electric mixer to make the frosting. After you finish making the green frosting give each student a sugar ice cream cone.
The students turn the ice cream cone upside down and spread the green frosting all around the cone. Add any kind of toppings you want to the tree. I had my students count out a certain number of M & M’s, sprinkle shakes, dots, and other fun candy to practice counting and also to limit the number of candy each student got!
Here are the links for everything.
Freebies
There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bell Activity
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