The Christmas season is an exciting time for children in preschool and kindergarten. Children enjoy making projects to take home for gifts or to help decorate their classrooms. The following is a list of some of the projects I used in my preschool and kindergarten classrooms.
1. Finger paint on large white sheets of paper, using red and green paint. The pictures can be framed or used for wrapping paper.
2. Paint on Christmas shapes such as stockings, Christmas trees, bells and Santas.
3.Use dot or dab painters to decorate paper or Christmas shapes.
4.Cut Christmas tree shapes from green construction paper . Let the children springle glitter on the trees and glue on small construction paper circles. Add a yellow construction paper star to the top. Don’t forget the brown trunks!
5. Cut gingerbread person out of heavy brown paper. Distribute raisins. buttons. glitter, etc. to each child, so they can design their own gingerbread person.
6. Bring your old Christmas cards to school and let the class cut them up and make collages.
7.Teach children how to make snowflakes out of thin white paper. Hangs them on string from the ceiling or decorate the walls. You will have a winter wonderland!
8.Use popsicle sticks to make stars. Glue 3 sticks together to form a triangle. Glue 3 more sticks together, so you have 2 triangle shapes. Put these together and let children paint and decorate them.
9.Let children trace Christmas cookie cutters on paper, cut and decorate. Hang on a Christmas tree with thread.
10. Let children write or dictate a letter to Santa Claus on a paper they have decorated.
11. Use sponge shapes to make Christmas tree scene. Dip Christmas tree sponge in green paint and press on white paper three times. Dip small rectangle sponge in brown paint and press on bottom of tree for trunk.. Use star shaped sponge and dip in yellow paint for top of tree. Dab Q-tips in red paint and decorate tree. Sponge shapes can be cut out ogf ordinary sponges, if you don’t have the necessary shapes on hand.
12. Give the children large candy cane shapes. Let them paint red or any colr stripes on them
13. Make Christmas wreaths out of paper plates and small macaroni shapes. Cut the middle out of a paper plate. Let child spread a heavy layer of glue on the plate. Glue macoroni on the plate, covering as much of the plate as possible. Attach a red velvet bow to the top of plate and lightly sprinkle glitter over macaroni. Another version we made, substituted green and red tissue paper for the macaroni.
14. We made snow pals with a snowman shape. Let them fill in the snowman shape with cotton balls, popcorn,etc.
15. Snow pictures can be made with blue construction paper,white paint and salt. Let the children paint snow people, hills,trees and then sprinkle salt to make the pictures sparkle.
16. Make Christmas paper chains with red and green paper to hang everywhere.
These are just some of the Christmas projects and activities you can do with your preshool or kindergarten class. The directions are only suggestions because we all know children like to create their own thing. Have fun and Merry Christmas!
