5 Ways to Celebrate Before Winter Break that DON'T Include Christmas

5 Ways to Celebrate Before Winter Break that DON'T Include Christmas

While I grew up celebrating Christmas both at home and in school, I also went to a Catholic school where almost everyone was also celebrating Christmas (and kids were there by parental choice). If you have a situation where every one of your students celebrates Christmas, or you are hosting a variety of winter holiday celebrations, then by all means celebrate Christmas...

BUT

if you are looking for ways to celebrate that don't exclude some of your students but are still TONS of fun for all involved, why not try some of these ideas?

Celebrate Solstice Instead with a Sundial Project

Winter solstice is nature's holiday this time of year! I just love celebrating solstice, and look forward to it every year. Why? It signals the end of the short daylight hours and the stretch of increasing daylight hours that I adore!

What better way to celebrate solstice than with SCIENCE (yes, I know I'm a big nerd)!

Here are some websites to get you started:

Scientific American Sundial 
15 Minute Papercraft Sundial
Explorable Sundial

While making a sundial, why not talk about what the solstice is and why we have it? Read a book or watch a video:

Books (Amazon affiliate links, read disclosure here).

The Shortest Day by Wendy Pfeffer
The Return of the Light by Carolyn Edwards
The Winter Solstice by Ellen Jackson
The Solstice Badger by Robin McFadden
The Shortest Day by Susan Cooper
Video
Crash Course Kids: Seasons and the Sun

Curriculum Connection: The solar system!

Celebrate Winter with Snowflakes

Even if you don't live in a region that gets snow, there are still a lot of ways to celebrate with snowflakes! One of my favorite things to do is to craft paper snowflakes but you can also make crystal borax snowflakes too, which are so pretty, especially hanging in a window so the light can catch them.

Curriculum connection: If you are studying symmetry this is the perfect tie-in!

Snowflake Creation Ideas

• Paper snowflakes
• Borax crystal snowflakes
• Geoboard rubberband snowflakes (obviously just don't use as ornaments)
• Popsicle stick snowflakes
• Pipe cleaner snowflakes
• Digital snowflakes

Get in my Belly!

This is just one way of fostering connection with kids: baking together! Not only can you sneak in measurement math without anyone noticing, you can create something together that you can all enjoy! Not possible due to food allergies? Why not ask for allergy-free recipes from families, or instead pop popcorn (chemical change! volume!).

Set up an exploration station where students can smell and taste small amounts of ingredients, such as salt, sugar, cinnamon, etc.


Working on sequencing? Have students instruct you how to make hot cocoa, s'mores, etc. and then follow their directions. They will talk about it for MONTHS. Watch this video of a dad making sandwiches instructed by his kids.

Curriculum connection: Sequencing, measurement, senses.

Cozy up with a Good Book

Once you have your baked goods, hot cocoa, etc. have a PJ day or "winter campfire" and read to your students. They might not have someone reading to them at home. Even middle schoolers and high schoolers will enjoy being read to (if it's the right book). Leave out those holiday stories and choose a book about kindness.

Picture Books About Kindness
7 Middle Grades Books that Teach Empathy
Books that Teach Empathy (all ages)

 Curriculum connection: literacy, community, character education.

Play Games

If you do choose to have a party, pick games that include all! Playing together is truly one of the greatest ways to form connections with your students. While some families play games at home, not all do and many kids get left out of this wonderful past time. We play a lot of games at home, but it helps that both my kids are close in age and there are a lot of games we all like to play as a family.

Indoor party game ideas from Red Tricycle.

Try pin the nose on the snowman.

Active Games

• If you are brave, have a snowball fight with cloth snowballs.
• Play musical chairs (leave out the Christmas music!)
• Capture the flag.

If you want something the whole class can play without getting too out of hand, try Winter BINGO.

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telling time introduction

H has been able to tell time for awhile but since we don't have analog clocks around (I know, I need to hang one up!) he doesn't get much practice. F hadn't been exposed before so I thought it might be fun to make a game of it. I found this site which is great for printables! You can choose how many pieces you want in your set and then the type of picture. I chose Time (Clocks)-- full hours and Time (Clocks)-- half hours (at the bottom of the page).

Here they are printed out and trimmed/laminated:

Ready for play:

I introduced full hours first in a game of memory. It was nice that each clock was a different color, because it helped with the game. After we played memory with the cards a few times, I added in half hours, and then we switched to a game of go fish which worked out really well. After the end of the game they both had a much better idea of how to tell time.

Another game to play with these cards would be to sort them and then arrange them by earliest time to latest time. With younger children you could pick a few of the colors out and just play by color. The kids really love these cards!

pi day necklace

Pi day (3.14) is a fun holiday for math geeks and it is just around the corner! If you know me at all, you know just how much I love pi. If there were an e day, I'm sure we would celebrate that as well. There are so many projects you can do with your kids - try pointing out circles you see around the house or out and about, and how pi comes into play (for all of you non math geeks, remember C = πd? If not, head to wikipedia). You can have fun by baking a pi(e), or serving a snack in the shape of pi. This piñata looks like a fun project for next year for us. I hope I don't forget about it!

This year we made pi day pasta necklaces using the first dozen digits of pi. Here are some more if you are an overachiever:

3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307816406286

Pi Day Necklace

What you need:

• beads or pasta you can string, in different shapes, sizes, or colors
• string or yarn
• scissors
• tape (optional)

We used more of our dyed pasta for this. F will be 3 this month and was able to follow the numbers I wrote down on his own so this seems like a good craft for the preschool crowd. He had a lot of fun choosing which (different) piece would come next and then counting them out and stringing them on. Just cut the string to your desired length, add a piece of tape to make the stringing end rigid, and start sorting and stringing them on. Simple and cute!

bowl o' pasta

F stringing

Done!

This project makes me want to hit up the local bead store and make my own pi bracelet!

Here is another post on Pi Day activities.

DIY Color Resemblance Sorting Cubes

DIY Color Resemblance Sorting Cubes

We have a number of Montessori materials at home that we use, but their cost limits the number of items we have. Sometimes it's possible to use the basic idea and make your own substitute. Kid Advance (where I've gotten the bulk of our Montessori items) has a Color Resemblance Sorting Task that looked really cute but $50 for a task that could become boring quickly didn't seem like a good use of money. I thought that using cubes to do a similar task would be fun and also keep with the sensorial nature.

We frequently head to Michaels, 40% off coupon in hand, for art/craft supplies, so on one trip there I looked for and found 3/4" wooden cubes that I thought would work well. Here they are:

Materials Needed to create your own color cubes:

• wooden cubes (or another shape you like)
• craft paint; you will want white as well as a few colors
• paint or foam brush
• mixing palate/tray

You will have to paint the cubes twice since the first time you will only be able to paint 5 sides, so make sure you have time to let them dry enough that you can paint the last side while you still have all your colors mixed. You can use as many shades of a color as you'd like by mixing in different amounts of white paint. Don't worry if they aren't perfect; most kids will beam with pride over something they've created rather than dwell on slight imperfections. I suggest adding the paint colors yourself and then letting your child mix the paint together and paint the cubes one at a time. You will want to make sure the coat is fairly even and not too thick. If it's too thick you won't be able to do fun things like stack them:

You can also make silly mosaics or build towers or whatever else you'd like to do with these sweet little blocks.

Another great way to use these is for measuring. Ask your child to pick out different toys or books they would like to measure and then figure out how many blocks tall (or wide/long) the different items are. It's a great way to explore non-standard measurement, and then compare using a ruler or tape measure.

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