Mini Preschool: Christmas: Crafts

We had kind of a rough late Wednesday night/early Thursday morning with both Ivan and Adelia. So, I was pretty proud of the fact the we made it to preschool at all this week. But, I forgot to take my camera, so all these pictures I took after the fact, but I think you can still get the idea.

Preschool was at Suzy's today, and she had craft. First she did a quick run through of the Christmas story. Then let the kids each color their own nativity scene and cut it out and glue it on a blue background. Then they got to glue on one big star, and put on a bunch of little star stickers. To show the new star that appeared at the Saviour's birth. I was so proud of Lincoln, he wrote his name all by himself. He only wrote Linc because he ran out of room, but for a 3 year old, I thought it was pretty dang good. And it was Ivan's first experience using the scissors, and I had to help him a lot, but he was a good listener and seemed to enjoy it.

Next we talked about the Shepards. We talked about how the Shepards use a Shepard's crook to help gather the sheep, and how Jesus is our Shepard. Then we talked about how a candy cane is symbolic of a Shepard's crook. We made cute little candy cane ornaments out of pipe cleaners and little beads that fit together. The kids got to string the beads on the pipe cleaner and then we bent them into the shape of a candy cane.

Lincoln's candy cane is on the left and Ivan's is on the right. Ivan was kind of in and out of preschool today, and I let him be. He was cranky from lack of sleep and it was a lot easier to just let him wander and only participate when he wanted to than to try to keep him doing the projects. (This is usually my philosophy with his anyway, since he's so little still, but today I didn't try as hard as I normally would to keep his interest.) But anyways, this is why his candy cane starts out with a pattern, because I was doing it, then he came in and I let him start choosing which beads to put on.

For our last craft, Suzy gather the kids together and told them about a little boy named Matt who wanted to make a soft bed for baby Jesus. Matt's mother told him that every time he did something nice for one of his family members or friends that we was really doing something nice for Jesus. For every kind act, Matt's mother had him put one straw in the manger, so that by Christmas time Jesus would have a soft bed to sleep on. Then Suzy gave each kid a manger made of craft sticks, a large clothes pin, and a piece of cloth and a string. The kids wrapped their baby Jesus's in the cloth and tied the string around to keep baby warm. Then we put Jesus in the manger. Then the kids cut pieces of orange yarn into small strands and put them in the mangers for Jesus's bed.

Lincoln loved his baby Jesus. He played with it all afternoon. He kept taking the straw out and putting it back in, and telling me that Jesus was such a nice baby. It was cute.