Sensory tub, jingle bells & more!

We've been having a good time with all of our fun Christmas activities. Here are a few things we've been enjoying.

Christmas Sensory Tub:

I put this little sensory tub together for the girls and they love it. Last year we used cotton as the filler but this year I added green colored rice. Maile gave me the idea and when I went to digging in my supply closet I found green dyed rice. So much fun for the kiddos!

Items in the tub:

• Plastic Candy Canes (dollar store)
• Christmas erasers
• Red, green, clear "jewels"
• Cinnamon sticks
• Small ornaments
• Small Christmas cookie cutters
• Spoon
• Small cups
• Green rice

How we use it:

• Sort jewels by color; talk about the colors of Christmas
• Find erasers that match
• Smell cinnamon stick and talk about the smells of Christmas. (We've also got this great book that is scratch and sniff and talks about the smells of Christmas).
• Decorate our small tree with the ornaments
• Count the candy canes
• Use the candy canes to stir the "rice soup" (that one is all Finley!)
• Hunt for treasure
• Use the spoon to scoop rice into the cups. Fine motor practice!

 

 

I also set up this jingle bell tot tray. The square paint pallet and large red jingle bells are great for RoRo to work on one-to-one correspondence and counting practice. The round paint pallet is great for both girls. They can practice patterns and predicting what comes next. The cups are labeled 1-10 and Rowynn practices putting the correct number of small bells in the correct cup. I also played a little game with Finley were I would put a certain number of bells (like 5) and we would count them. Then I would tell her to close her eyes while I put some (like 2) in one of the little gingerbread houses. Then I would ask her to count the remaining bells (3) and ask her how many I had taken away. Fun math game that Maile told me she was doing with her boys!

 

 

I found this idea on pinterst...funny how most of my sentences begin with that phrase! Anyway I let the girls pick out the colors for each letter and made them into lights. Then Finley traced the letters with glue and sprinkled glitter on them. Rowynn tried to trace the letters put it was a hot mess so I just did it for her. However, I did work with Rowynn with the lights (before the glue)...we talked about the letters, I asked her to point to a specific letter and we practiced putting them in the correct order to spell her name. I then stapled the "lights" to yarn and hung it up for décor!

 

Here is another cute craft found on pinterest that Finley did! I asked her how the three wise men found their way to Jesus. She answered, "A magical star!" Everything in her life is magical...oh what innocence!

 

 And lastly, another pinterst craft. I was really amazed at how well Rowynn did with this. I laid the cut strips down in a random order and asked them to find the longest one. After that one was glued they had to find the next longest one, and so on until we added the star. Rowynn was able to correctly do this with no help from me! After the star they painted with q-tips to add snow! Super cute!