LaPaz Home Learning

well…you know!

At least it is around the LaPaz arts and crafts center!

This weekend marks the official beginning of Advent, and so the beginning of Christmas preparation. Inspired by the always-inspiring Meg at Montessori By Hand, I decided to spruce up the art center and replace all of the usual arts and crafts trays with some Christmas-themed activities for the littles, Montessori-style!

In place of the usual paper-cutting tray:

Here Santa holds some pre-marked Christmas tree garlands to cut!

And Frosty offers pre-folded snowflake-making materials!

Paper garland making should be fun and easy with a child-sized stapler!

And in place of the regular collage materials, who can resist a “build-a-Santa” kit?!

Of course the water colors are always out and ready to use, but now red and green take center stage for making Christmas cards and gift tags from pre-cut and folded watercolor paper.

Not shown is that the regular play-doh activity has been replaced by salt-dough, a small rolling pin, Christmas cookie cutters, and acrylic paints for making and painting ornaments! ( I made a batch of salt-dough and then rolled into a dozen or so individual cookie-sized balls. These are kept individually wrapped in a sealed container. Then one ball is put out in a small container to use. After making an ornament,the child replaces this ball with a fresh one for the next child. Squares of wax paper keep the work surface neat.)

Each activity has enough materials for the children to work at it several times if they so  choose.

I am hoping this will be enough to keep them happily busy and creative (along with their normal activities) for the next week while Superboy and I finish up our Chemistry unit. I have lots of ideas for more Christmas arts and crafts trays, but we need to pace ourselves, after all, we’ve got 24 days to go, yet!