As I sit down to type this I realize – there’s only 3 days til’ Christmas! The 3,2,1 countdown begins. Parents are writing to-do lists for baking and wrapping, while scheduling Christmas parties and church services … Kids are heading home for their holiday vacation with anticipation of visiting family and opening Santa’s gifts … However you celebrate this time of year – Mi Families wishes you a happy holiday season!
Mi Families loves to celebrate all sorts of holidays in our youth and adult programs. Our parent and me preschool class did activities such as playing Jingle Bells, decorating “cookies,” and filling “Santa sacks” with goodies to gift others. Our Kids Kitchen program made treats like homemade hotcocoa, and also played games like Limbo Lights, pin the nose on Rudolf and candy cane catch.
During child care and tutor times we kept busy making decorations, reading Christmas stories, and learning through the holiday theme. Teachers, daycare providers and parents discussed ideas on how to teach through themes such as Christmas. During holidays and seasons it can be especially hard to keep kids attention, much less learn new concepts. Luckily in today’s world there are lots of ideas easily found on pages like Pinterest!
We try and share ideas on our social sites (Pinterest, YouTube, FaceBook, LinkedIn…) and love when our members share ideas on our sites. One idea we often share is using an easy curriculum to keep kids busy. Curriculums like Mother Goose Time provide theme based fun and each month include an extra day of topic based learning for seasonal fun. This month they provided a Santa Workshop package!
Using the Santa Workshop theme I expanded on topics for older students while simplifying activities for younger kiddos. From science to social studies, to reading, writing and math we kept our attention on learning through fun activities. Santa’s elves taught us about science while cooking in the kitchen, social studies was learned about North Pole living, we read holiday stories, wrote out wish lists, and counted reindeer…
We used math in many ways ending with counting down to our holiday vacations. Next week we’ll be counting down to New Years! After the new year starts we will be transitioning to our winter semester schedule. We’ll be scheduling parent and provider workshops, while enrolling kiddos in our youth programs. We still have a couple part time spots for child care and tutoring available. We are filling up quickly for our homeschool partnership classes …
Leave a Reply