Weekly Round Up

12/14/2013

Hello friends!

Today I wanted to share with you the crafts we've been doing in after care this week. With my class schedule this past semester I was only able to work in the afternoons on Monday, Wednesday and Friday - hence why I only have three activities for the week. But! Starting in January you all will get to see a full weeks plan as my schedule has changed! So let's get started and at the end of the post, I'll share my calendar for January and some new changes that I'm excited to start.

Monday:

These Santa Handprints I found on Pinterest and are so adorable! We used cotton balls as his beard although little white pom-pom's would work just as well if you have little hands and fingers like my kiddos. I found that the cotton balls were a little large and you couldn't see where the fingers were!

Wednesday:

Double feature coming at you! Wednesday was a small group of kids number wise so we went fairly quickly through each craft and squeezed in two! The first one was shape Santa, which really turned into an a circular santa and a triangle hat. But none the less, still adorable!

Our second craft of the day were reindeer handprint ornaments! These cute little guys took no time at all which allowed for two crafts. I loved how each reindeer had their own personality through the different colors of fur. Pre-schoolers are so creative! It's been a humbling experience to take a step back and allow myself to be ok with their craft not coming out just like my example one or what I had planned in my head. But rather, allow them to be creative and create unique pieces, like, these reindeer.

Friday:

Friday's craft may have been my favorite of the week, possibly the month but we shall see. How stinking adorable are these reindeer headbands from Pinterest!? I wish I would have snapped pictures of all of them but this just shows how unique each one was. I drew the template of the antlers and let them color them in as wished. I again did the same thing with the eyes and the band itself. Then I helped them tape it all together and glue on the Rudolph nose! They loved them and were wearing them the rest of the day!

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Looking ahead into January I wanted to post my calendar/lesson plan. At my job we send out a monthly e-mail of the school wide calendar as well as before and after care so I had to have mine ready to go this week before break. Thankfully I was ahead of the game and had already lessoned planned.

With the start of the new year I really want to incorporate more reading and academics into the activities we do in before and after care. Obviously I'm not teaching them in a rigorous fashion like during the day but I don't want to it be a day care either, there needs to be a healthy balance of learning and still have a fun and relaxed atmosphere. I found this AMAZING pin a while back on themed pre-school books and activities for each month. JACK POT! This site has helped me plan my crafts around a book and they have such great ideas for all months, especially like January where there are not really major holidays to celebrate. Go check it out!