Santa's Workshop at our Dramatic Play Center

It's just about that time of year...Christmas!

You know it's coming close when all the chit chat in the classrooms suddenly turns to Santa, presents, counting down, and talk of a long awaited Winter Break.

So the students in my classroom, obviously, wanted to turn our Dramatic Center into something fitting for the holidays.

The students contributed by bringing in lots of wrapping paper, bows, ribbon, boxes, cards and bags!

Here is our new Santa's Workshop!

Don't you love the sign?

The children worked very hard on it yesterday.

On the other side of the puppet theatre, we added a place for bows, ribbons, scissors, tape, and boxes.  Gift wrap is found in the large basket to the right.

After choosing a toy or book to wrap for a friend, students select which bow they would like at the Gift Wrapping section.

To encourage writing, we added a Writing Station, complete with cards (some were bought and some were made by me) and tags.  We learned how to address a gift using the words "To" and "From".

One student said "We need a North Pole...pole!" so we made that for our centre today.

To encourage role play and turn taking, we made job necklaces that the students can choose from.

They hang here for the children to choose.

Everyone has a special role to play.  Today "Mrs. Claus" suggested that she bake some cookies to sell.

This student found metal juice lids and decorated them with craft materials to use as our cookies.

Another student who was playing an "Elf" wanted to be responsible for taking pictures with Santa...but we had no camera!  So he made one using a box brought in, a lid and foil.

Other students enjoyed using the cash register.

You can see all of the writing taking place at the Writing Centre today!  Everyone wanted to make a card!

You can purchase my new Santa's Workshop Dramatic Play Centre here.

It's on sale until tomorrow night and comes with LOTS of fun things to enrich your play!

Just add wrapping paper, boxes, bows and it's ready-to-use!

We have been talking a lot about list making for the past several weeks.

I put this writing paper out at our Writing Centre along with a variety of toy flyers.

Students were very excited to start a list for Santa by cutting and pasting items that they wanted and writing them.

You can download your own FREE list for Santa by clicking on the above picture.

I also included clip-art of various toys in case you didn't have any flyers available.