As Christmas is getting closer we are doing a lot of Christmassy crafts. They give us the chance to talk about a lot of things in English, like colours, decorations, presents and E. has already learnt plenty of Christmas vocabulary (like candy cane, gingerbread man, angels, advent, wreath, candles, sparklers, baubles, tinsel, gifts etc.)
Here I’d like to present you 2 ideas in connection with decorating a Christmas tree.
Sticker decorations and letter recognition:
I searched for a Christmas tree colouring sheet and I copied it in WORD, then I added the letters and a little table at the bottom. In the table I put the letters and above them you can see a Christmas related word. (We didn’t read them I just wanted her to see the words written down. I can send you the word document if you wish to use it)
I had some Christmas stickers from last year (I’d bought this sheet in KIK for 300 HUF) and I added an angel, a star, a candle, a bauble and a gingerbread man. These stickers are really cool. They easily come off the paper, so I took off the candle and the gingerbread man, just for fun. Later, E. put them back.
One afternoon after her nap this was the scene waiting for her. She needed to search for a figure and stick the right sticker on the starting letter of the word.
But first she coloured the tree green, the star on the top yellow and the trunk brown. A little more colour talk.
artist at work
Then searching and sticking started:
peeling
sticking
I had to add some more letters as she wanted more baubles and stars.
When she’d finished we displayed it on the door of our living-room.
2. Dot marker decoration
We got a box of DO-A-DOT markers for E.’s birthday in May and ever since we’ve had so much fun with them. Actually, I saw this dot the letter Christmas tree activity online, though we’ve done a similar dot marker activity at Halloween with a pumpkin.
This time I drew a Christmas tree with some presents below it. I wrote the beginning letter of the colours, like G for green (a lot of them, though I should have written even more), R for red, Y for yellow, P for purple, B for blue.
I prepared all the dot markers well in advance. I took off the lids so E. didn’t need to although it could be a nice fine motor skill practice. There were quite a lot to do with the Christmas tree and I didn’t want her to get bored with the opening of the markers.
First, she tried almost all of the colours, then she stuck to one colour and finished dotting all of them on the sheet. As I’d always been telling her to put the lid back on the markers she decided to put it back and pack away the marker when she’d finished with a colour.
packing away
red baubles
She mentioned that she was putting red and purple baubles on the tree. When she was doing the yellow decoration she said they were candles. I asked quite a lot of questions to make her talk while she was working. We even sang the “Oh, Christmas tree, oh, Christmas tree” song:
Then we put the finished Christmas tree next to the other.
I have some more Christmas tree ideas from paper plate with some painting and sticking, however some snowy crafts are on the way too. We’ll see what we have time for.
Also, I’d be happy if you let me know in the comments what Christmas tree projects you have with your little one
I do not want to brag, but yes… a little I do. E. is so interested in the letters and the ABC that, I do not exaggerate if I say, within a year or two she’ll be reading. In this blog post I would like to collect some fun activities we’ve been doing with the ABC.
-Videos/Songs
The very first favourite. E. was watching this video her mouth agape in amazement when she was 8-10 months old.
Phonics Song 2
The traditional one is always the best (Upper- and lowercase)
A song about how to pronounce the letters – Phonic Song:
Since the age of 2 we have been watching a lot of Mother Goose Club songs:
She could watch it all the time. Sometimes she wants to watch them all day (if I let her).
– Magnetic alphabet
I bought the first set of magnetic alphabet when E. was about 18 months old. She loved them at once. First it was just one pack of upper case letters. We used it on the fridge, but the letters always fell under it. So I had a magnetic word game at home (for adults, the letters are too tiny for little children) and I started to use one of its steel boards (You can also use a steel tray or a magnetic whiteboard)
Then I bought another pack of both upper- and lower case letters later when we started making up words at about the age of 20-22 months. (Frankly, we don’t really use the lower case letter yet – age 2,5 years)
At the very beginning we just put together the alphabet from A to Z. We sang the ABC song and/or the phonic song while arranging the letters.
Adding the missing letters to the alphabet with Daddy
I told her words starting with certain letters, like E. for her name or D for daddy, M for mummy, A. is for our nanny’s name etc. As time passed I added some more words, such as E. is for elephant, egg, or A is for apple, ant and so on, not just names. I always tried to include things that she knew or she was really interested at that time. Within a few days she was the one who said the words: – B is for ball and bubble.
Next, we made up short words she was already familiar with. Daddy, Mummy, M. (our dog), dog, cat, yes, no, hat, rat, egg, bat and so on. I have no intention to teach her how to read. She is the one who, from time to time, comes to me with the letters to play with. She’ll work it out by herself.
– Matching gamewith the magnetic letters
What you need:
letters (magnetic, felt, play dough, cut out from cardboard, drawn on bottle tops)
plastic surface (e.g.: whiteboard, but I used an A/4 sheet that I spoiled while laminating.
markers (not permanent!!!)
sponge or tissues to wipe the surface if you want to reuse it
I put the letters of these words mixed in a little container
E. came and emptied the container.
And matched the letter. The interesting thing was that I didn’t need to tell her toe start from left to right.
She wanted to do it with our nanny, too.
When she got bored with it I wiped the surface off and at another time I made a new one with: yes, no, love, sun, hot, rat as you can see it in the photo.
She had to start with her letter, E.
It was summer time we last did this activity, and now sometimes she “reads” letters on her clothes or, some book’s title.
– Search for the letters – sensory bin (autumn)
What you need:
a container
bark (you can buy it in a packet at animal stores)
small object connected to autumn in some ways (berries, grapes, apples, pears, twigs, conkers, pumpkins, leaves etc. What I did was I chose 1 bunch of grapes made of plastic, 2 apples made of felt, 3 golden leaves, 4 pumpkins made of felt, 5 real conkers.)
letters (wooden, foam, felt, magnetic, whatever) of A-U-T-U-M-N
a sheet of the object and the letters of autumn shown
Throw the bark into the container and hide all your chosen objects in the bark. Put the sheet in front of your child and whenever they find something among the bark, place them in the right group, or if it’s a letter, then on the right letter.
And the search can begin.
This activity gives you and your child plenty of opportunity to talk about not only the letters, but also colours, autumn fruit, trees, leaves and berries, and in this case numbers too.
I still have several activities, but I’ll need to come back with them in another post. Try them, enjoy them and let me know how they worked out.
Non-native Mommy 