Polar Bear Ice Cream Cups

 

I saw the teachers making these fun little ice cream cups for the kids in the toddler room and I had to share them here with you! They took a plain vanilla ice cream cup, added banana slices for ears, chocolate chips (upside down) for eyes and I'm not sure about the nose but I think it is an upside down Hershey's Kiss. Too cute!!! We will definitely be making these with some of our Polar activities next year! Look for some other fun wintery snacks we've had lately to be posted here soon!

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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!!!

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!