Christmas crafts and decorations

Here are our Christmas projects for this year.  We put as many as we could up to decorate before sending them home for winter break.


Handprint Christmas Trees, laminated and bordered with decorative duct tape

snowflake picture frames with their pictures in them

shoe traced reindeer with hand print antlers

decorated Christmas Trees

Paper name chains in Christmas colors

Thanksgiving gift to parents

As a gift to the parents before Thanksgiving break, the kiddo's and I made turkeys!  We traced out their hand prints and cut a lot of them out in fall colors.  Then used baby food jars, painted the inside with clear glue, covered in glitter, then glued on the hand prints in a turkey feather fan pattern on the back.  They came out super nice and I even made a teacher one for myself that has one hand print from each child as the feathers.

The Pumpkin Project

There were some ups and downs with this project.  The original idea was to have the pumpkin seeds sprout in our classroom so the kids could see it, then send them home with the families after.  Unfortunately, our pumpkins tended to mold a little faster then they sprouted (which they did indeed sprout, just not faster then the yucky mold).  So next time when we do this, we will send the pumpkins home the same day we "plant" the seeds!

This project did require prep work at home ahead of time for me.  I wasn't going to try to carve pumpkins in class with a knife next to a class full of curious toddlers!

So at home the night before I carved out the top of enough small pumpkins for each child to have one.

I used a spoon to loosen up the seeds and  insides a little to help with the sprouting after the kids would add the dirt to the inside.

Still carving.......

The day came and the kids were super excited to see the pumpkins, even more when they found out what we were doing with them.

After we were done, we sent them high on a shelf next to the window to get some light.  Again, next time, sending them home as soon as we are done with the "planting" part!

Just for those that were curious, this is what they ended up like after.  As you can see, some of them did sprout, but the yucky smelly mold was a huge minus.  But you learn something new every day.  Now we know how to do it better!