Las Posadas: A Mexican Christmas Celebration

Hi! I'm Ayn and I am a Ga. Pre-K teacher, serving 4 and 5 year olds in an inclusive setting. I share my classroom adventures on my blog, little illuminations. 

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The holidays are a great time to learn about a variety of cultures! One of the many holidays from around the world my Pre-K class will learn about in the coming weeks will be Las Posadas, a Mexican Christmas celebration. My Sunday School class learned a little about Las Posadas this week, and I thought I would share some of the fun we had with you!

Las Posadas is a nine day celebration (nine days to represent the nine months Mary carried Jesus). During that time, families take turns  each night re-enacting the Christmas story in their homes to symbolize  Mary and Joseph's journey to Bethlehem. Two family members dress up as Mary and Joseph, and the home is the "inn". A procession follows Mary and Joseph to the "inn" and when the innkeeper lets them in, the procession follows and the guests come in to kneel and pray in front of the nativity scene. At the end of the journey, Christmas carols are sung and often children take turns to try to break a pinata filled with treats.

In our church this year, families will take turns to host statues of Mary and Joseph, each night staying at a different home. This week, our Sunday School class read Tomie dePaola's "The Night of Las Posadas". 

We then made Mary, Joseph and burro statues from clay. The children were very creative making their statues! We listened to multicultural holiday music as we worked. It was a lovely way to explore the holiday traditions of another culture.

We also talked about some of the German Christmas traditions and had a little German holiday snack!

The holidays are such a great time to enjoy traditions from all over.  Kindness, joy and and love are universal, no matter which country or faith you hail from. I hope however you celebrate this winter, that your holidays are merry and bright!

 Stop by and visit me anytime at littleilluminations.blogspot.com or visit the little illuminations fanpage on facebook! And be sure to check out PreK+K Sharing EEE!

Quick and easy gifts and a FREEBIE

Christmas is quickly approaching! Do you have all of your parent gifts done? Do you have them wrapped? Do you have student gifts ready?? So much to do with the time quickly passing! Only EIGHT, I repeat, EIGHT days until Christmas! Can you believe it?? But that means only 3 more days until break for me…how about you? Are you already on your Christmas break?

If you are panicking about what to do for parent gifts this year here are a couple quick and easy ideas. 

Handprint Mittens:

Materials:

·       mitten cutout or pattern

·       Small heart pattern or cut out

·       White paint

·       Paintbrush

·       Cold hands, warm heart print out

·       Hole punch

·       Pipe cleaners

·       Student pictures

·       Markers

Directions:

·       Students cut out the mittens

·       Students Write: Love, Student 2013 on the back of the mitten

·       Teacher paints their hands and students place them in the mitten.

·       While paint is drying, cut out hearts and cold hands, warm heart sayings.

·       Glue heart in center of hand and saying down by the fingers.

·       Glue the child’s photo in center of the heart.

·       Laminate (optional)

·       Paper punch to of mitten and ring a pipe cleaner through the hole.

Easy as 1 – 2 – 3~

Tissue Paper Wreaths:

Materials:

·       Student pictures

·       Small white paper plate (or white circle cut outs)

·       Small red circle cut outs (for center of the wreath)

·       Red and green tissue paper cut in small squares/rectangles

·       Glue

·       Pencils

·       Paper Punch

·       Pipe cleaners

·       Scratch paper

Directions:

·       Students glue the little red circle in the center of the white paper plate/circle

·       Students take scratch paper and put a big glob of glue on it.

·       They take their pencils, wrap a piece of tissue paper around the eraser end of the pencil and dip it in the glue and glue it around the edge of the white circle. Repeat this step until all of the white is filled in with tissue paper interspersing a few red pieces of tissue paper (holly berries)

·       Glue student picture in the center

   Easy as 1 -2 -3

What do you get your students for Christmas?? I used to spend money on books and all kinds of goodies but a few years ago I realized that a pad of paper and a pen was a HUGE HIT! So, that is what I do, I head to the dollar store and find cute pads of paper and fun gel pens. The kids get so excited because they now have their OWN pad of paper to keep notes on. 

Also, do you have your students do anything over break?? For those of you who didn't know, I like to have my students continue to practice certain skills so I send home a Holiday Challenge packet. It is filled with simple activities for them to do at home, to keep their brains busy. The students who return it after break get a special prize...usually a trip to my treasure box.

Click here for a copy of the packet!

Enjoy and I hope you have a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS!! And a HAPPY and SAFE NEW YEAR!

Happy Holidays Pre-K & K Style!

Happy holidays... happy holidays... let the merry bells keep ringing... happy holidays to you!  

Probably one of my favorite holiday songs!  Can't read it without singing!

Anyways... it's Jennifer with Simply Kinder!  Excited to be back in a flash and share some great holiday resources and ideas with you that will work great in your preschool and kindergarten classrooms!  

First is my most favorite... my parent gift!  I love making these scented ornaments and they are smell for years and years!  

Here's how to make them:

1.  Mix 3/4 cup apple sauce (plus a dash more) and 1 cup cinnamon with about two tablespoons of  glue.  I would suggest buying 2 of the tall Cinnamon's and 2 of the large jars of apple sauce.  That should get a classroom of about 30 very easily. 

2.  Knead the dough.  It's important that there is NO creases or folds in the dough.  You definitely have to work it.  In the picture to the right I would probably want to get those folds at the bottom worked out otherwise he may crack.  

3.  Roll it out onto wax paper. 

4. Then stamp with a gingerbread cookie cutter.  Poke a hole with a toothpick for the string.

5.  And lastly place to dry. They will have to dry for several days.  Turn them over every half day or so.  I would also suggest prewriting your students names on the wax paper so you know whose is whose!

6.  Decorate with students' faces, hot glue works best.  Ribbon hot glued through the ornament's hole, a sequence, and anything you want to add!  Make adorable holiday gifts that will smell delicious for years!  I like to use items I have in my classroom each year and so this year it was silvery sequence and red ribbons!

We will wrap them by putting them in brown paper bags with just regular old paper towels to keep them protected.  We will write on the backs of old Christmas cards I collected from last year, staple them together and they are ready to go!  (The trick is to ask for them now so no one throws them away before they return from break... and save them for next year!  The kids also love using these cards in the writing lab!)  To read more about my Christmas Card centers that kids will love click here!  Your students will love my fun and easy center!

We have always done these fun gingerbread houses and then the big push for rigor came around and "no more fun" seems to be the philosophy.  Well... don't tell me I can't do something!  So, in this fun activity students will create a graph using addition, subtraction, or counting and then use that graph to build their house!  {Stop by to see more pictures and read what's included!}

This is my most favorite addition to the holiday time of year!  I noticed on a trip that my own son could not sing Christmas carols on a family trip to the North Pole!  Saddened my hear to realize a lot of the kids on the bus weren't singing!  So... what does a rigor teacher do?  That's right.. we are using them for fluency and close reading!  We started these last week and let me tell you... I have never seen my kids so excited to read all year!  They are especially great for the more advanced kids!  Also, interactive as the kids can select the image to glue onto their carol!  You are sure to love these!

Check out this fun bulletin board we made!  Of course the faces are my own little magic elves for privacy issues!  These we so fun to make and are going to make great keepsakes for the families!  If only you could see their actual little bright shining faces behind!  Click the image for other elf antics in kindergarten (it has a freebie so be sure to do so!)

That's the holiday fun we have had so far!  Be sure to stop by and visit!  Tell me you found me from Pre K and K Sharing!

December and Rigor

Hello!  This is Terri from KinderKapers and it's December!  Yea!! or are dreading the time between now and vacation?  The kids are so squirrely this time of year and even an elf in the classroom doesn't help (very much).  I say if you can't beat them....join them.  Use the trappings of the season to engage students and to increase rigor.

Take a simple activity such as making paper chains....okay, simple for us, but not so simple for all.  And you start with fine motor practice.  Most kids can make paper chains for hours.  Now ask them to make their chain with a particular pattern.  Today we made abab chains, tomorrow it will be abc, and Thursday is aabb.  Are you ready for one more challenge....let's up the rigor.  Now tell your students that you want the chains to be a certain length (today it was 10 links long).  Then they must tell you how many of each color do they need to make that pattern.  Only then I let them get their colors.  Simple.  Rigorous.  I have holiday decorations in my room.  Win, Win, Win. 

I you want to read more about how it went last year...you can read about it here.

What else can we use you ask?  How about Jingle bells?  I like to start with a little kinetic fun.  Put some jingle bells in a stocking and can your students feel how many bells are inside?  5 seemed to be the magic number.  Most of my students could count correctly with five and under.  If I put in more than five, their accuracy went down with each increase.  Rigor.  Any time a students needs to stop and think...that is rigorous.

Can I use jingle bells for anything else?  YES!  How about a game of missing addend.  I take some jingle bells...then have my students count them.  Next they hide their eyes and I hide some under a cup.  When they open their eyes they must figure out how many are under the cup.  Rigor comes in two ways.  First, start with a number you know they will be successful with, then up that number.  Any time you add paper and pencil it adds another dimension to the task and increases the rigor.  I made some recording sheets to go with this activity.  I am giving them away here.  Merry Christmas!

The Christmas isles and dollar spots are filled with things that will excite your students.  I have a little package of presents already wrapped and shiny.  I put numbered tags on them and now I have a center for ordering numbers.  I found a bag of mini erasers at a craft store and now I can use them to scoop and count, graph, or make patterns.  I can use them to talk about more and less or make up story problems.  The possibilities are endless and I would love to hear what you have found.

So don't go crazy this holiday season...embrace the craziness, have fun, use all the excitement to keep your kiddos learning.

WELCOME December: Crafts & Creativity

DECEMBER! It's already DECEMBER!!!

It seems like we've just barely pushed our chairs back from the Thanksgiving table of gratitude and now the calendar announces December. How is that even possible? Are you scratching your head? Or is it spinning? Let the official countdown begin. 

I'm headed to the airport to zip up to Atlanta momentarily. I get to give the opening keynote for the SDE conference for PreK & Kindergarten teachers. So today's sharing will be a visual buffet of ideas, with links to their sources. Now that our blog is our third December -- we have oodles of ideas already catalogued here. 

Let's get started with a couple of classic Santas. STARS!

Gather up your cotton batting, cotton balls and all things COTTON! 

Here's a winter-alternative possibility. 
Open-ended. 
Process art. 
Marble running paint, creates the snow globe appearance.

Got paper plates? 
Here's another classic! 
Easy-peasy. 
No matter what the age of your peeps. 

I have a RoundUP of over 20+ Christmas and December themed Bulletin Boards 
over on my own "Rainbows Within Reach" blog. 

There are quite a few ideas that will serve as inspiration for these few short weeks ahead. 



Now let me go back through some of our incredible, earlier December articles around here. 
This one is just as classic today as it was when it first appeared. 

{Click the pictures below to go to the earlier articles} 

Dr. Danny Brassell offered ways to keep reading through the holidays. 

Need all the info to build your own Lego-table? 
Here's the link to everything you need to know! 
{click the pic} 

I tell you my head has been spinning. 
Last month was the ultimate month for me professionally. 

I had a school visit in Virginia...... 
where EVERY student in attendance received a copy of my picture book, "Tall Giraffe." 

If you're looking for an entree for your Non-Fiction studies, 
or if you need a gazillion giraffe arts ideas, 
you'll want to click the pic to go over to my blog. 

NAEYC was incredible. 
So incredible, I forgot to take very many pictures. 
Here's a couple as they relate to our authors here at the collaborative! 

Moi, Mimi Chenfeld, Deborah and Lisa Ooey-Gooey Murphy

Moi, Jenny Spencer (newest contributor here) and Miss Carole -- from the 16th of every month

Have you been to the Frog Street Press' summer EVENT? SPLASH!!!

Would you be a dear and help spread the cheer? 

Every pin from this article will help circulate it to a broader audience 

and we are so grateful!

THANK YOU. 

Have an amazing December!