Nativity Scene Handprint Parent Gift

It's better late than never, here are the results of our Christmas parent gifts. 

They are a little time consuming, but they come out beautifully. I even did a set for my mother in law and great grandma using my daughter’s hand. For my mother in laws, I put two back to back and created tree ornaments.

The best part of this present is that it is a truly meaningful keepsake.

This is our second year doing this project. We found it last year over at Planet of the Apels. Over the two years I have learned a few tricks. 

First, it easiest to make a chart about which hand become which animal so they all face baby Jesus. Second, have the children do the hand print and then add all the extras later. The exception being the camel we have the children add an extra thumb print for the head and then a print for the neck. It's easiest to use a nice marker to make the manger, we tried finger prints the first year but it's just too much. 

Lastly, practice how you are going to do the writing including what kind of pen you are going to use. This year I started doing it on two sides and it looked awful. I felt so bad, my assistant and I spent a day pulling them off and re backing them. Go Miss OCD! Luckily my assistant loves me (or at least she pretends too), so she forgave my craziness.

Anyway, they came out wonderfully and I hope the parents cherish them forever.

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?