These printables were created to use with the book Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree by Robert Barry. A reader emailed me a few weeks ago and said it was her husband’s favorite book growing up. I’d never heard of it, but ordered it and fell in love. It will be one book that will stay in our Christmas book basket for years to come!
The printables for Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree include fun activities to tie in with the book ~ vocabulary words, word tracer cards, puzzles, tree size sequencing cards, a story sight word chart, recycling items, counting activities and more! Be sure to download BOTH sets of the printables since they go together and build on the skills your child will use.
Last year I hosted a Christmas Ornament Show & Tell on our family blog, No Ordinary Moments, and it was MUCH fun having others link up and share pictures of some of their favorite ornaments along with the stories behind them.
These printables were created to use with Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett. Last year I put together more lapbook-style printables and these are in addition to the pack to extend the learning for preschool and kindergarten ages.
The Gingerbread Baby Printables include fun activities to tie in with the story ~ vocabulary words, word tracer cards, tracer page, counting activities, number identification, patterning activities and more!
Over the last several years, we’ve been slowly adding things to do during the advent season. Although Advent started yesterday, we are still pulling together a few things to do with the kids over the next few weeks, all in anticipation of Christmas and the REAL reason for the season. Here are a few of the ways that we celebrate together as a family.
Each year we’ve had a simple Advent wreath in the center of our dining room table. I arranged {fake} greenery in a basket and added in five candles ~ 4 tapers {3 purple and 1 pink} and then a larger white candle in the center {the Jesus candle}. Each week we light a new candle at night, together as a family. This year we’re also excited to pull out our Advent log ~ it’s sitting in front of our fireplace and has a place for one candle for each night of Advent. We haven’t been able to use it for several years and I will have to share pictures of it soon!
Over the last few years we’ve been cycle through the three books in the Jotham’s Journey series by Arnold Ytreeide {the three are Jotham’s Journey, Tabitha’s Travels and Bartholomew’s Passage}. This year we are starting the series over again with Jotham’s Journey. Each night after dinner we light our Advent candles and sit down together as a family and read one of the passages for the evening. The kids have loved this series {and so have the adults!!} and it is fun because each year the stories all connect with each other.
During our Bible time for school, we are going to be using the Birth of Jesus from Grapevine. We loved our Joseph study and the fact that everyone {including Kaleb} could participate. Our Multi-Level Teacher Guide E-book retails for $7.95 and is on sale for $6.95. The Student e-book for Multi-Level retails for $5.95 and is on sale for $4.95. {Sale!! Use the code ADVENT11 for 20% off your purchase from Grapevine through 12/31/11}.
AND this year we’re going to get a little ‘crafty’ thanks to the wonderful Amanda and the Truth in the Tinsel ebook that she released a few days ago!! I’ve been going through the activities and printing things off to do with the kids. I LOVE that it has 24 activities available, but it also offers alternate schedules in case 24 seems too overwhelming for you to do.
That’s what we’ll I’m interested to know how YOU all celebrate Advent ~ or do you? Are there special traditions that you have as a family during this time? Leave a comment and share!
Another week that didn’t go quite according to plan. I really shouldn’t be surprised anymore, but somehow I am. Monday I ended up having surgery for my lovely kidney stone that refused to come out of my body and Tuesday…well, I actually {for the most part} followed doctor’s orders and rested. I said mostly. :) And then snow…and trying to keep kids interested in school when snow is falling ~ ha!
We did continue on with our Advent devotions with Kaleb using Beginning with God at Christmas that goes along with the Beginner’s Bible. It’s a fun devotional for preschoolers from The Good Book company and has a simple coloring activity with each lesson, a sticker to show you completed the lesson, along with a short question/answer time for kids. It’s just enough to keep his attention ~ which I love. The picture below shows one of the lessons we worked on last week.
If you are interested in any of The Good Book company’s preschool devotionals, you can use the coupon code hscreations10 for 25% off your first order until December 31st.
Our Nativity Preschool Pack and Folder
You’ve all probably seen Carisa’s Nativity Preschool Pack that she put together and this was the ‘base’ for what we did most of the week. There were a few activities that we didn’t get to do {i.e. crafts}, so we’ll work on some of the fun stuff next week too.
We did most of the activities in the Nativity Pack and are storing them in folder to store them. Here’s a peek at what our finished folder looked like.
The front of the folder has a little name tag where Kaleb wrote his name and then a summary of the story that we read this week Sleepy Jesus along with his favorite part of the story.
Inside the folder we glued a verse that we practiced, Luke 2:11 {printables for this verse here}, pattern strips, our color tracing book, number matching sheet {folded accordian style}, animal/people sort & match, and beginning sounds tracers {most from the Nativity Preschool Pack}. I used a clear envelope to store the patterning pieces and the envelope flips up when we are doing the patterns.
The back of the folder has a book that we didn’t get to finish up this week and will work on next week ~ The Tale of Christmas {found at Musings of Me}.
I’ve uploaded our lesson plans for the week ~ nothing super crazy, but it has all the links in case you need them. We also did this cute A is for Angel craft.
Share what you are doing with your kids! Please link your exact blog post to the Mr. Linky below and link back here too! The updated guidelines can be found here if you need them.
Quick Note: We’ll be on a school break for the next two weeks, but I will still be putting the linky up for Preschool Corner each Friday in case you all want to share what you’ve been working on. :)
Christmas is a little less than two weeks away, but there is still plenty of time to squeeze in some last minute printables or fun studies with your kids. Here is a great collection thanks to Val from Lapbook Lessons for you to browse, bookmark and enjoy! Feel free to add a link if you have one to share!