Holiday decorations

This year we made garland and snowflakes to decorate our classroom.

You might think that they are just decorations but when we examine each activity you notice that there is a lot of “learning” going on under the surface.

The garlands were crafted with a needle and thread, cotton balls and cut pieces of candy cane colored straws. This activity was particularly great fine motor practice. We are really working on our hand eye coordination in so many ways! 

We also took the opportunity to introduce simple AB patterns with this activity. 

Patterns are an important early skill that help form a foundation for later math concepts. They are also important for language and literacy development. So much of our learning is in the fun we are having whether it be playing dress up or building with blocks to making holiday decorations for our classroom. 

It’s in all the things we do every day at Imagine. 

We made the snowflakes using tissue paper cut into circles. We chose tissue paper because it is light and easier for the children to cut when it is folded up. There is a lot of folding that needs to to be done before the cutting and we used this opportunity to talk about what “whole”, “half” and “quarter” means. After we folded it into quarters we folded it again, opened it up and counted the sections. Someone said when we unfolded it and counted to eight, “like pizza!”. These are the kinds of child made connections we are looking to provoke as educators. 

The cutting allowed for more scissor practice and the unfolding was important to do gently and with care. It was so rewarding to see to look on their faces when they opened up their snowflake.