As many of you know, I work in a Catholic School and this is, by far, my favourite time of the year! With the 1st Sunday of Advent tomorrow, we took a lot of time this past week to discuss what Advent means and how we can prepare for Christmas.
Advent
We learned this new poem together (I found it online a few years back but don't know who the author is! If you know, please comment below so I can give credit)
We even created our own Advent wreath.
I re-wrote the poem and made it available here as a FREE download:
Christmas Tree Cup Challenge
A colleague of mine found this activity on Pinterest and we knew we had to try it! I bought 100 green plastic cups (from Party City) and printed a picture of an ornament on each. Students had a challenge at the carpet this week - can you build a Christmas tree? We extended this by asking who could build the tallest one and who could build one using all 100 cups!
This was the BEST centre we had this week! So much collaboration going on!
Fine Motor Skills
To help those students work on their fine motor skills we set out these boards - buttons, zippers and snap buttons. These were purchased years ago from Wintergreen Learning.
Can you make a picture using shapes?
One of our provocations this week asked students to make a picture using 2-dimensional shapes. We started our 2D shapes unit this week by reading this great story, Mouse Shapes.
What can you build?
This was an easy provocation to set up - paper towel rolls/toilet paper rolls, hole puncher (for students to add punches to the rolls if they wish), straws, Popsicle sticks, Lego and cork. Students were asked to build anything!
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| "We are making a big house with tunnels." S.S. & S.C. |
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| "This is a house with walls." S.A. |
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| "I made a heart machine." E.Z. |
Playdough Christmas Cookies
At our Playdough centre, we added Christmas cookie cutters and a variety of craft materials (pom poms, sequence, pipe cleaners, etc.)
Christmas Tree Poking
Our students really enjoy poking activities - using a large push pin (I bought mine at Staples) and poking through outlined images. These are great activities to work on fine motor skills!
You can find this (and many more!) in my Poking! Fine Motor Fun pack on TpT.
Roll-A-Santa - Light Table
This is a fun and easy game to set up, focusing on subitizing.
I printed the pieces 5 times on overhead transparency so many children could play together. You could also print on card stock and leave this at a table or work with a small group.
Want to download this activity for FREE?
If you like this one, there are many more games I have created all about numbers in my
Fun with Dice pack:
2-Dimensional Shapes
We just started our 2D shapes unit this week. We spoke about characteristics of the 4 basic shapes (circle, rectangle, triangle and square) and students went on a shape hunt around the room!
(I'll write a blog post all about 2D shapes once our unit is done!)
Letters to Santa
We had our students write a letter to Santa. They could draw or cut out toys from flyers of what they want for Christmas.
You can download all of these various Santa letters for free by clicking the image below.
Here are my weekly plans if you'd like to take a closer look:
You can download the Week-at-a-Glance PDF version{here}.
If you would like the editable version to modify this for your own class click {here}.
You will need Power Point to edit.
I used the following fonts if you wish to keep it the same (free to download):
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