SMMART MATH:

Marshmallow Snowmen Favors

These little guys are a lot of fun to make and are a perfect favor to take home from a winter party.  In this little geometry activity, your child can feel, play with and discover the properties of a cylinder.

You will need:
Clear celophane pretzel bag
twistie tie
7 inch black ribbon to symbolize hat
9 inch festive color fat ribbon for scarf
google eyes
orange triangle nose cut from construction paper
5 marshmallows

Have your child count out 5 marshmallows and slide them into the celophane pretzel bag.  Tie off the top with the twistie.  Talk about the shape of a cylinder marshmallow.  A stack of cylinders also looks like a loooooong cylinder.  Cylinders can roll and stack! 

Tie the black ribbon around the twistie tie to symbolize a top hat.  Tie the festive fat ribbon around the "neck" of your snowman.  You can cut a frayed edge for a scarf look.  Glue on the eyes and nose.  You can use a permanent marker to mark in buttons on the body.

Look for other cylinders around the house...soup cans, cups, rolling pin...

SMMART ART:

Gingerbread Disguises

My daughter's class sent home an outline of a gingerbread man on a white xerox piece of paper.  She was asked to bring it home and disguise it so that it wouldn't be eaten by Santa on Christmas Day.  She really likes Red Riding Hood lately...

We created our own little clan of gingerbread princess to decorate their bedroom door for the holidays!  We talked about some words that mean disguise like incognito, conceal and camouflage...

The girls loved cutting, drawing and especially gluing their gingerbread girls together.  This is a fun activity that helps put the twinkle of Christmas in their eyes.

"Can't catch me....I'm the gingerbread man (in disguise)!"

SMMART READING:

Name Practice

Look at these cute little turkeys we did for Thanksgiving...but you can use any holiday icon you can think of... Christmas would work great with stars or candy cane shapes.
First have your child draw iconic shapes for the season. Then your child will cut out the pictures. Before you begin the game, practice with your child how to write her name in her best handwriting.

 Now for the fun part!  Have your child hide her eyes in one room of the house while you hide the pictures throughout several rooms (remember how many you hid in each room so you can be sure that your child finds all of the pictures). 

Give your child a pencil and ask her to find all 3 of the pictures hiding in the bathroom.  When she finds each picture, she will write her name on it and then put it back.  When she's done finding all of the pictures in that room she will report back to you.  This gives your child a chance to practice her name on her own, with a little solo time to herself so she feels like a big kid on a mission.

Now ask your child to find the 4 pictures that are hiding in her bedroom.  When she finds them, again, she will write her name on the picture and put it back where she found it.  On and on until every picture is found in each room.

Now when she reports back from the final room, you take her hand and go to each room, where she will show you where she found the pictures and collect them all.  Your child will love to run around with you and show you where she found all of the pictures!
This game is great fun and can be adapted for letter writing practice or spelling word practice.  Your child can write a specific letter that needs special handwriting attention, or you can hide 26 pictures so she can write a letter of the alphabet on each picture. 

Older kids can hunt for pictures to write their spelling words on.  When they show you where they found all the pictures and collect the words, you can correct any spelling errors together.  If there is a word or two that need more practice, then focus the whole game on those two words.