Christmas Color and Trace Book (Freebie)

I just love the digi stamps and clipart at Scrappin Doodles!  When I found a great set of holiday digi stamps there, I new I needed to turn them into a Christmas coloring book for my preschooler.  This book is keeping my preschooler very busy!  It has 6 coloring pages, each with 2 pictures and corresponding words to practice reading and tracing. 

Click the image below to grab a copy!

After my preschooler's done coloring she'll cut the pages in half.  Then I'll help her turn this into a cute little Christmas book!

             Linking up to: Classified Mom 

 and Playing with Words 365  and Toys in the Dryer and Living Life Intentionally                                                           

                                                                

Christmas Sensory Tub

Here's the Christmas sensory tub I'm using with both my preschooler and my tot.  I bought a few things from the dollar store and the rest of the items were things I found around the house or tucked away in our Christmas boxes.   Here's what's inside: 

Christmas Sensory Tub 

Bells 

Ball and Bell Ornaments

Bows

Tissue 

Christmas Bags

Krinkled Bag Stuffing 

Variety of Stuffed Ornaments 

Artificial Poinsettias

Empty Paper Towel Rolls 

Pine Scented Tart Candle (wrapped)

My tot likes picking up and looking at each of the items.  Most of the time he just takes things out of the tub and then puts them back in.  Other times he'll watch his big sis and follow her lead.  My preschooler likes making patterns with the ornaments and using the paper towel rolls as a chute for the ball ornaments. 

Other Sensory Tub Ideas from Pinterest       

                                                          Source: homeschooladventures3.blogspot.com via Lisa Kniess on Pinterest

                                                                    Source: totallytots.blogspot.com via Lisa Kniess on Pinterest

Linking up to: Classified Mom

Handprint Turkey Card

Finally, a painting project that doesn't make me frustrated!

Just the thought of getting out paint and paint brushes makes my stomach queasy.  Painting is the one kid craft I just don't have the patience for.  Without fail every time I open the paints and hand over a brush to my preschooler paint ends up everywhere except the paper.  But I have finally found a painting project for the kids that I can stomach.  Handprints!  It's simple, makes a great keepsake and puts the control of the paint in the hands of an adult.  Here's the handprint turkey's made by my preschooler...

Materials: Paints, paintburshes, paint tray, white paper, googly eyes, card stock, envelopes, craft paper, glue

Tips and Tricks:  After making the handprint I let my preschooler use orange and red paint for the feet, beak and gobbler.  Then when the hand print was dry we used googly eyes to decorate and turned the handprints into cute cards for the grandparents.

Other Handprint Turkeys from Pinterest: Check out these other cute handprint turkeys!

                                                                    Source: meetthedubiens.blogspot.com via Lisa Kniess on Pinterest

                                                                        Source: crafts.slides.kaboose.com via Lisa Kniess on Pinterest

Color by Number Turkey

My preschooler loves to color!  She's learning to identifying her "teen" numbers, so I made her this cute color by number turkey to practice recognizing numbers 13-19.  Tomorrow I'll work with her on this color sheet while my tot takes a nap.  Sounds nice and relaxing doesn't it!  Click on the picture below if you'd like a copy!

Great Links: Check out these other great color by number turkeys!

Addition/Subtraction Turkey from Lory's Page

Numbers 1-5 Turkey from 1plus1plus1equals1

Linking to Living Life Intentionally

Playdough Turkey

Usually we stick to using cookie cutters and rolling pins when we break out the playdough, but I thought I'd get out some craft supplies and see if my kids could get creative and make cute Thanksgiving turkeys.  My tot had a great time playing and my preschooler got pretty creative...

Materials: brown and orange playdough (click here for my favorite playdough recipe from Counting Coconuts), a red pipe cleaner, googly eyes and small colorful craft sticks

Tips and Tricks: This was simply playtime for my tot.  He loved just pressing the craft materials in the playdough and mixing up the colors, but my preschooler caught on quick and loved making mini gobblers.

Something Extra: I thought we could keep our cute little turkeys around to use as a Thanksgiving decoration, but my preschooler had other ideas.  When she was done with her turkey, she smashed him up and created monsters, ghosts and aliens which turned out to be just as much fun as making turkeys!

Great Links: Check out these other adorable turkeys! 

Playdough Turkey from Just Deanna

 Clay Turkey from Kaboose

Linking to Living Life Intentionally

Ripped Paper Indian Corn

There are so many great Indian Corn crafts out there, but I wanted to do something super simple because I knew my tot would love to work on a project with his big sister.  So here's our Ripped Paper Indian Corn Craft. 

Materials: Construction paper (cut brown construction paper in the shape of a corn cob and rip up yellow, orange and red construction for the corn pieces), a lunch bag (cut into small stripes about 3 inches long for the corn stalks) and glue. 

Tips and Tricks:  Spreading the glue out was a little tricky for my tot, so I had to help him with this part.

Other Ideas: Check out these other great Indian Corn crafts!

                                                                                Source: parents.com via Lisa Kniess on Pinterest

 

                                                                        Source: allkidsnetwork.com via Lisa Kniess on Pinterest

Ripped Paper Indian Corn Inspired by: The Ramblings of a Crazy Women

Leaf Mosaic - Teaching Symmetery

I was so excited about this great leaf mosaic activity I found at A Mommy's Adventure.  I couldn't wait to get started with my preschooler!

First my preschooler had to sort a small plateful of beans (I bought a bag of dry mixed soup beans) .  With so many tiny beans the sorting took much longer than I planned and required an extra hand to help.   Then she got to glue (here favorite part) the beans onto the leaf print outs.  If you're looking for a great leaf pattern check out the free one we used from Enchanted Learning.  

I extended the activity by taking a leaf from her leaf collection and explaining the concept of symmetry.  Then she made another leaf mosaic, only this time she carefully put the same beans on each side to make it look symmetrical.
 

I love when I can sneak in a little bit of math into a fun craft project!

Our Thankful Tree

 

Last week my preschooler and I made a list of all the things she is thankful for.  It's obvious we worked on this project the day after her birthday because many of the things she listed were gifts she received at her party.  I typed, printed and cut out the list.  Then my preschooler and I taped each word to a craft leaf and then taped the leaves to our Thanksgiving Tree.  We'll use our Thanksgiving Tree to count down to Turkey Day by taking one leaf off the tree everyday. 

After we made our Thanksgiving Tree, my preschooler picked a few of the most important things from her list and created a thanksgiving leaf as a part of a preschool project.  She also used ripped paper in fall colors to decorate her leaf.

Inspired by: The Happy Home Fairy

M & M Leaf Game

I found a great leaf game at Making Learning Fun to play with my preschooler.

After printing out the game boards and cards all I needed to gather was some M&Ms.
 

 
To play the game you just pick a card and take away the color/number of M& Ms on the card.  The best part...eating all those tasty leaves that fall off the trees!

After playing a couple times with my preschooler, I let her play this game for some independent practice during quiet time.