Thinking of fun activities to keep children excited and interested during the week before Christmas can’t be easy. With everyone thinking of Santa Claus, presents and candy, keeping the focus on classroom activities seems like it would take some work, but Ashley Franklin’s class at The Children’s Center in Norwich was focused on the project at hand during my time in their classroom on Tuesday morning.
The four-year-old class and I spent the morning decorating Christmas trees. Not real Christmas trees, but some they created almost all by themselves.
Two at a time, the students would come up to the table at the front of the room and begin decorating their trees. The students (with a little help from Ms. Ashley and myself) took green frosting and used it to paint a sugar cone. Once the painting was completed, they were given a cup full of gum drops, M&Ms and raisins that could be used as decorations.
With holiday music playing, the kids sang along to their favorite songs, decorated the trees and ate a little bit of candy.
It wasn’t hard work, but it was messy. My primary responsibility was to help frost the trees and to hold them steady as the children placed the candies on the tree. By the time we were finished, my hands were covered in green frosting, but that was okay. Several of the students were just as messy as I was.
When the trees were finished, we wrapped them up to send home with the students, and most of them were excited about both showing their creation to their parents and tasting their yummy work of art.