Mini Preschool: Christmas: Music/Poem/Story

To start off Preschool today, Misty used the Little People Nativity to tell the kids the story of baby Jesus's birth. I love the Little People Nativity (she borrowed my set) it was one of the better Christmas decoration purchases that I've made. My kids love it, and have played with it every day since we got the Christmas decorations out of the box.

Anyways, all the kids loved listening to Misty tell the story. Then she taught the kids about symbols and that a symbol is something we use to remind us of something else. She told us that at Christmas time we use a lot of symbols to remind us of Jesus Christ's birth. She had a basket full of rolled up papers, and on each paper was one of the symbols of Christmas. The kids got to take turns picking out a paper, then after Misty talked about what the symbol on the paper was, she had an activity, poem, song, or story to go with it.

I was a little bit in and out with Adelia, so I didn't hear all the symbols or what they stood for (but I'm sure I could find them online) but here's what I did see. :)

Candy cane was one of the pictures. Misty read a poem about a candy cane and then gave each kid their own little one to eat.

Candle was another one. And we sang a song about 5 Little Candles. And talked about how people used to use candles on their Christmas trees before we had Christmas lights.

Stocking was another one. Misty had a fun game for this one. Each kid got to pick two Christmas socks out of a bag, and then they had to walk around and trade socks with each other until they had two matching socks. Super cute.

Bell. We sang enough verses of Jingle Bells that each kid got to shake a stick with bells on it for a whole verse.

 Tree was another one. And I couldn't resist taking a picture of Misty's beautiful tree. It seriously looks like it came right out of a department store. I love it! We talked about how the ever green tree stays green all year long, even in the winter.

Another one we talked about was presents. Misty had the kids watch a youtube video of Big Bird singing about how all he wants for Christmas is his friend Snuffy. It was a cute song and all the kids were glued to it.

I know there were more, and I wish I had them all down here. I know I could look them up probably, but I'm way behind in the blogging as it is, so I'm opting not to spend a lot of time searching on the Internet for them all. But Misty did a great job and the kids paid really good attention. (Which in my mind is a sign that things are going well.)

To wrap up the symbols of Christmas, Misty gave each kid a Christmas tree, and pictures of all the symbols. The kids got to glue their symbols on the tree.

Both my boys need to work on glue stick etiquette. Lincoln pushes so hard on the glue that it uses up an entire glue stick with every project, and Ivan was trying really hard to eat his. But, their trees came out cute. We colored the symbols after nap time, and then hung them up in our kitchen window.

Misty did the cutest snack idea as well. She gave eat kid a folded up tortilla and had them use a butter knife to cute shapes out of it, so that when you unfolded it you had a tortilla snow flake. She put the snow flakes on cookie sheets and sprinkled them with cinnamon and sugar and broiled them for a bit, until they were crispy. So cute and so fun! I think this might become a snack time ritual at our house all winter long.

To keep the kids occupied while their tortillas were baking, Misty let them have an indoor snowball fight. She took a bunch of old scratch papers and we wadded them up into paper balls and threw them at each other. It was great. The kids had a blast, and the best part was no one can get hurt by a paper ball.