Gingerbread Men!

One of my favorite December projects is making gingerbread men! I've done it in the past and everybody who came into my room commented on how good it smelled :) This year, the recipe I used didn't turn out so well! I used a basic cinnamon and applesauce recipe, but it turned out too sticky! I had to add some Elmer's glue to the mix to help hold it together some.

It turned out to be a cheap project... all I had to buy was the applesauce (and I have leftovers, yummmm) and I had the cinnamon from the last time I did the project!

First add your applesauce.

Then add in the cinnamon.

Then stir! All the tots took turns stirring... they LOVED helping!

After it was all stirred together, I balled it up then rolled it out flat.

I provided a couple cookie cutters for the tots to choose from...

And they had lots of fun cookie cuttering!

Now this is where my project took a turn for the worse! Oh no! Since the dough wasn't the right consistency, we had to end our project here (for now). My assistant worked some magic and was able to do the decorating part later on, which you can read about HERE.

So whether you make the dough as a sensory play dough activity like I did, or if you want to turn it into decorating gingerbread men like Kayla did, it is still a very good smelling, fun, awesome project to do this time of year!

You can use buttons, bells and so much more! 

Happy decorating!!

Snowmen Handprint Ornaments

This year was pretty tight on money, with just moving and everything. So I needed a cute, super cheap project that we could do for the parent gift. I bought the supplies to make salt dough (flour, salt, and oil) and decided to make handprint ornaments!

I looked through many different handprint art projects to find something cute and Christmas related, and decided to do snowmen :)

Here are the pictures:

First you need your ingredients! Total cost was under $5 for everything, plus lots of leftovers for future projects! (BTW, $5 for 12 gifts is not too bad at all!)

Mix everything together!

Form a ball of dough, then roll it out and press little handprints in!

I skipped a couple steps here, but oh well. You will want to bake at 200 for around an hour or two. At an hour, some were still not completely dried out but they had a few days to air dry which was fine. The ones baked at 2 hours were completely fine and dry, so just do whatever you have time for!

Anyways, after baking you can get ready to paint! We tried tempura paint at first, which gave it a very dull look because the paint soaked in. We found acrylic paint is much brighter and looks way better!

First we painted the handprint white, then painted the rest in a solid color. Let it dry (we let it sit for a day, but it was dry after an hour or less.) We used toothpicks to add all the little details! Hats, scarves, eyes, etc. They turned out adorable!

You can read more about it HERE, at Kayla's blog!

Christmas Art

Here are some of the art projects that we did this year! All the following activities were inspired by Pinterest finds, or thought up on my own... aka the awesome Cone Trees :) Unfortunately, my lunch break falls when our art time is scheduled so I'm not able to be there during all the fun! However, I linked up with my wonderful co-worker, Kayla, so you can see more pictures and read more about each project!

These are stockings :) As you can see, we didn't tell the kids where to put their cotton balls or how many they could use. Some used more, others used less. Art is their creativity, and who are we to tell them how to express it? Read more about the process HERE.

These are what I like to call "Picasso Penguins"! I pre-cut all the pieces out and let the tots put them together how they want :) 

These are Christmas light bulbs. I've done this activity in the past, which you can read about HERE. 

These were supposed to be candy canes. What we WANTED was to marble paint, and have the marbles create pretty red lines, resembling the red and white stripes of a candy cane! Unfortunately we couldn't find our marbles and had to make due with a bumpy sensory ball instead. The results are definitely interesting LOL 

This is one of my more creative ideas!! I got the cones, which are actually reused thread spools, from Arts and Scraps several years ago. I've been saving them to use for this project, and finally have an age group that can do it! You can do anything with these... it is so very open ended ♥ You can read more about the process HERE.

More of our holiday projects will be posted soon, including out gingerbread men and parent gifts!

Rainbow Sensory Bin

Here's another one of our sensory bins that we put together. The base is some kind of bead stuff that I bought at the Early Childhood Conference earlier this year. (Caution: very slippery when they get all over the tile!!)

We added LOTS of colorful things from all around our room: pompoms, feathers, plastic stacking tubes, and so much more! We have even been saving the twist off caps from their squeeze applesauce and fruit pouches!

They had a blast at this table and didn't want to leave when it was time to clean up!

You can see how into it they are!!

Little hands at work ♥

Winter Wonderland Sensory Bin

We've been researching some new ideas for our sensory table here in The Classroom at the End of the Hall. Here is our most recent creation! I used blue and silver tinsel from the dollar store as the base. (It was VERY static-y!) I included small foam cutouts, plastic snowflakes, unbreakable ornaments, bead garland, shovels, buckets, and much more! So much fun!

Here are the pictures:

Halloween Hallway

We had a door decorating contest at the center and this is what we came up with!! (Okay, so we actually decorated our entire DOORWAY, but we still won first place ;) )

You see: Ms. Kayla's awesome windows and witch!, handprint spiders, sidewalk (kiddies painted on grey paper!), and handmade Disney costumes ♥

A close up of the handprint spiders!

The other side of the doorway!

Puffy paint pumpkins on paper plates!! We were going for the whole "5 little pumpkins sitting on a gate" ..... :-)

A close up of my tree! I scrunched up some brown butcher paper and TA DA. Ms. Maigen helped the toddlers paint some GHOST LEAVES... how neat! :)

Ms. Kayla had the great idea of using egg cartons to make BATS that are 'flying'! (Hint: use cardboard so the paint doesn't chip off!)