Celebrating Advent

I have always loved Christmas and sharing it with 14 five and six year old keeps the magic alive. We teach two main topics in December; first Christmas around the world and second is the Season of Advent. I love teaching both. There are so many great projects and stories to share that I have to focus really hard on what I want the children to really learn and not get caught up in doing A,B, and C. Anyone else feel like there is so much to do and 3 weeks is not enough time?

 We  mainly focused on three things: What is Advent? Gingerbread Men, and Christmas around the world.  Gingerbread Men is our focus during Reader's and Writer's Workshop. We have been extremely busy, but we have got so much done. One of my favorite projects was creating an advent wreath (pictured above). In the past I have created one wreath using the children's hand prints. This year we traced and cut out our hands in green paper then glued them in bunches to make a candle holder. I placed each one in one of our four windows. As we move through the season of advent we will "light" each candle.

Our homemade slippers with out St. Nicholas treats on Monday morning.

On Friday, we spent most of the day exploring ST. Nicholas. We talk about how we honor him at school and church and how people in Germany and the Netherlands honor him. We created dutch shoes to fill with hay and carrots to leave out for him.

This year I also added a St. Nicholas ornament to our religion time. After reading the Legend of Saint Nicholas, we created these simple heads to hang on our tree. I think they came out adorable.

Sometimes you need to start your Monday off with a little tissue paper and glue.

As we continue to focus on the arrival of Baby Jesus. We created these stained glass window decorations. There are many different version floating around Pinterest.  The children love using the wax paper and lots of glue, especially once they knew they needed a lot of glue. We have big windows that look into our hallway and these look magnificent hanging in them.

We also began our project for our parent gift. Last years ones came out adorable. it is a bit labor intensive and if I didn't have an amazing assistant and some parent volunteers I couldn't see it happening. I love the way the story of the Nativity is told through the children's hand print animals. Here is the original source. I will share our results when they are finished!

That is it for me know! What does your month of December look like?