Christmas Last Minute Art Ideas

If you are in need of some last minute inspiration for crafts the children can make during the somewhat easy going, final week of school before the holidays, here are some I have used in the past!

1. Sock Snowmen: I have explained how these are made in my Winter post, but I just love them so much, they are getting included again! They are really easy to make and the children love them because they are like teddy bears! This is a craft that can be adapted for any age level too.

2. Reindeer Christmas Cards: I have also made these cards with my students and they were very effective, but super simple! I have no sample of my own but here is one I found at: http://madeinthedessert.wordpress.com/2012/12/10/handmade-childrens-christmas-cards/ 

3. Christmas Brown Paper Stockings: I also have made Christmas stockings with the kids, which do require a lot of preparation (hole punching and gluing the sock together before you get the children to sew the edges together), but they look great when finished and decorated! They also were useful for putting some chocolate Santa lollies in for each child on the last day of school, as a Christmas surprise. I got the idea from Enchanted Learning.

4. 3D stars and angels to hang from the ceiling: 

5. Christmas Wreaths: I have tried these out with Senior classes before, however I think they would possibly work well with Senior Infants also: 

This particular example is from http://rockmybabynewzealand.com/tag/arts/

6. Gingerbread Houses: This is not one for the faint hearted and that is why I saved it until last! It will probably be more useful as an activity if you have more time on your hands than a week. The children brought in shoe boxes, painted them brown and then we finger painted 'smarties' on the walls and roof. We cut out sweets that they made and stuck them onto the house and then added cotton wool to the roof, along with a chimney. The most difficult aspect of this project was attaching the roof the the house, it took up a lot of teacher's time unfortunately! It's one of those painstaking projects which you feel very proud to have accomplished and vow never to do again, all at the same time! 

Merry Christmas everyone!

Winter

Winter has well and truly arrived (Met Éireann says it is safe to say so at last!) so here are some lessons for the winter season!

Geography/Science:

We looked at an image and discussed how they knew it is winter in the picture. We then played a game of Cluiche Kim using the following PowerPoint:

Winter things seen in winter from SeniorInfants

In their workbooks, they crossed out the things that you would not see in winter and circled the things you would see. Early finishers had to draw more things you might see in winter. Over the course of the week, the children were asked to bring in new things for our winter nature table from home.

Science:

We discussed the ways that birds keep warm in winter and looked at pictures of birds using feathers for insulation (after feathers were mentioned as one particular way to keep warm).

We explored how birds also use migration to keep warm, through this PhotoStory about Wally the Swallow, which I questioned them on afterwards:

 

The children then drew two pictures side by side of the two ways that birds keep warm in winter.

Geography:
We helped teddy get dressed for the winter weather using items from the magic bag and explained why he would wear these things. We then discussed how teddy would keep warm if he lost his warm winter clothes (e.g. food, heating, exercise). The children mimed different things you could do to keep warm and the class guessed what they were miming. We drew all of the 4 things that would keep teddy warm in winter in separate boxes on our sheets.

History:

We read and discussed the book: ‘Snow Bears’. After this, we sequenced events from the story on the IWB, discussing the vocabulary of: beginning, middle, end, first, second, third, last. The children also drew their own storyboard for the story.

                                     Snow bears sequencing activity from SeniorInfants

We also discussed winter in the past. We talked about ways that people lit and heated their homes in winter in the past and also how they heated their food during the winter. We looked at laminated pictures and sorted the old pictures from the new pictures. We then completed this worksheet, labeling each as either old or new:

Art: 
We filled a white sock with a large ball of newspaper and then a small one. We twisted the top of the sock around a good few times and folded it down on top of the snowman’s head to make a hat for him. We added buttons, eyes, a nose and some children added cardboard (cereal box strength) arms to his sides.

 

Music

I showed the children two winter themed pictures of an inside and outside scene. We talked about sounds you might hear in each scene. I played Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons: Winter’ for them and asked them to choose which winter scene they hear in each section of the music i.e. the blizzard picture or the indoor picture by the fire. Following this, they pretended their fingers were falling snow and moved them in time with the music as they listened again. 

Winter vivaldi from SeniorInfants

We also sang the song ‘Winter Clothes’ as a transitional activity.