Upcycled Snowman Lightbulb Christmas Ornaments

It's time again to come up with ornaments for our kids to make to hang on our school tree. I try to change it up every couple of years and have been searching for something easy and economical for the kids to make. I also wanted something a little different than the same old ornaments that you see every preschool class make. I saw these some time ago on Pinterest and knew we had to try them!

First, we painted the lightbulbs white. As we didn't have any glitter, this served as more of a primer than a real need to paint over the white bulbs.

We painted the tops, or hats, blue and dipped in cups of glitter.

We added eyes, nose, mouths and buttons with puff paint.

I had some fleece scraps that the kids could choose to use if they wanted to make a scarf.

After tying some yarn around the top, we took them up to the lobby and hung them on the tree.

It was a perfect time to pose with our class in front of the tree!

We will be reading lots of great snowman books during our winter theme, but "Snowmen at Christmas" is a favorite and goes perfect with this activity!

Happy holidays!!!!

TOP 10 of 2012

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!

It's been a wonderful year! I'd like to thank the readers here for taking time to read, comment, share and pin the posts here. I get so many of my classroom ideas from things other teachers share, and little illuminations provides me with a way for me to pay it forward (just a little) by sharing here. I am so thankful to get to know so many wonderful folks via the blogosphere and social media. I was even lucky enough to meet several bloggy buddies this year in person! (note to self: I still need to finish that post about the meet-ups at NAEYC!)

To start the year off, I thought I'd share some of your favorite posts. These are the Top 10 little illuminations posts from 2012!

   10.  Perky Penguins In Pre-K
    9.   Jump Rope For Heart
    8.   All in A Day's Play
    7.   Pet Week Play In Pre-K
    6.   Baby, It's Cold Outside
    5.   A Gift For Dad, A Book and A Bloghop
    4.   Discovery Bottle Inspiration
    3.   Cloudy With A Chance Of Weather
    2.   Making Literacy Connections With Our Names

 And DRUMROLL, please......  the NUMBER 1 post of 2012 is:

    1.   Signing In And Out Of Pre-K

In all honesty, posts about bulletin boards are year-round hits---the number of visits to those posts far outnumber any others. I didn't include them in the list above for that reason. I thought I'd include a list of the TOP 5 Bulletin Board posts of 2012 here:

     5.  Back To School Bulletin Boards...Redux
     4.  Spring Bulletin Boards
     3.  Dr. Seuss Bulletin Boards
     2.  Fabulous Fall Bulletin Boards
     1.  St. Patrick's Day Bulletin Boards

Now, you've seen what was popular on little illuminations. What was YOUR favorite little illuminations post in 2012? Please share it in the comments!


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Baby, It's Cold Outside!

Here in Georgia, we occasionally have cool weather in January, but rarely is it cold enough for snow or ice. That doesn't stop us from really enjoying our winter unit and all the fun that that entails. You may have read about our "Faux Snow Day" on Prek and K Sharing. To help get us in the spirit, we decorated a playtent to make it an igloo, and later made a cute paper plate walrus to adorn it (above). We also made igloos with cotton....

and with marshmallows.

We also used cotton balls and our polar animals for sensory play...

We did a little ice fishing (and worked in some letter recognition)!

We made snowman windsocks....

We graphed our favorite polar animal: polar bear, walrus or penguin. What's your favorite?

We served up "hot cocoa" in our Hot Cocoa Stand....

And made wonderful "Snowman Snacks" from Donettes to snack on.... YUM!!!

Perky Penguins in Pre-K

Last year during our "Polar Pal" unit, we made these "Marvelous Macaroni Penguins". 

This year we decided to make our penguins from our shoe prints. Each child traced their partner's shoe, and cut out the shape.

They glued a white oval to the shoeprint and added a few colored triangles and some googly eyes...

Some of these guys really have personality...

"Mrs. Ayn! These guys are like twins or something--- they have MOHAWKS!!!" 

Our Pre-K rookery is filled with wonderfully unique "Perky Penguins"!

Christmas in Pre-K

We celebrate all the winter holidays in my Pre-K class.  I believe it's a great time to promote multiculturalism. Be sure to hop on over to Pre-K and K Sharing for more on what we do for other holidays and to read my post: "Using Holiday Celebrations to Promote Multiculturalism in Early Childhood Settings." 


Christmas is such a magical time, and I definitely take advantage of it! We had so much fun making giant gingerbread people, that we made a few giant candy cane decorations for the classroom.

 

 

We made a couple of ornaments for presents for the parents. We made cute snowflakes from foam die cuts and added a picture of each child on one side and let the kids decorate with winter foam stickers, glitter and sequins on the other side. They turned out beautifully, but somehow managed to miss getting photographed before being wrapped.(Had the kids not wrapped the gifts themselves, I would have definitely unwrapped for a few shots and rewrapped! ) We also made these cute snowman handprint ornaments for the tree in our preschool lobby. On the last day of school, parents were invited to take their ornament with them to use at home.

 I put seasonal items in our centers to make things fun.

And added a few props to change our scenery.

 


I saw this CUTE snowball toss game on Teaching Heart Blog in the post: Winter Party Planning Printables. It took me about 15 minutes to make and about $2 in supplies.  I simply cut a few simple shapes from construction paper and stuck them onto clear contact paper and applied the whole thing to the front of the pop-up hamper. I ended up stapling the contact paper to the front of my hamper, as it didn't stick well to the fabric for long. We played this all week and will probably use it in January for our winter/snow and polar pal units, as well! 

We made Santa Claus decorations from paper plates, cotton and a little red construction paper.

And these reindeer handprint puppets from paper bags and brown paper:

We did a lot of singing and dancing. Our favorite songs were The Tractors': "Santa Claus Is Coming On a Boogie Woogie Choo Choo Train" and Raffi's: "Must Be Santa".

The morning of our party, we made these reindeer cupcakes from chocolate frosted cupcakes, pretzels and a few candies. We saved them for our party later that day. 

My absolute FAVORITE holiday idea this year came from The SEEDS Network. I found these adorable (and very yummy) melted snowman s'mores over there and immediately knew they would be perfect to include in my gifts to my students this year. I have shared this idea with every teacher I know! I am also making a batch to take to all of my nieces and nephews on Christmas Eve. 

I never know exactly what to get my little friends. I usually try to get them a coloring book, because we don't do any coloring "inside the lines" in Pre-K (to find out why, read here). These are the goodies I finally decided upon.

Our final day before the holiday was celebrated in true Pre-K style! We wore our jammies and had a Polar Express movie party while drinking very cool hot cocoa. A nice way to end a very hectic season!

My holiday wish for you, whatever holiday you celebrate,  is that your days are Merry and Bright!