The simplest holiday invitation to play ever!

If you want to add a little spark of curiosity to your classroom, then pick up a few Christmas boxes and you will have the simplest holiday invitation to play ever…

The simplest holiday invitation to play ever! Teach Preschool

During the holidays, we try to continue with some of our routine activities as well as introduce holiday related activities.  But to spruce up the routines, we filled our holiday boxes with the materials the children are used to using and set them out on the table. When the children walked into the classroom, the tables looked rather empty but the children were immediately curious. “What’s inside the box Mrs. Stewart?” “Oh, I don’t know but we will soon find out!”

The simplest holiday invitation to play ever! Teach Preschool

We have been using our Christmas boxes to set up invitations to play all through the week. No matter what is inside, the children are suddenly very interested and ready to take the materials out and give them a go…

The simplest holiday invitation to play ever! Teach Preschool

So I bet you are even a little curious about what is inside the boxes we had out today. At least I hope you are!  At one table, the boxes were filled with red and green craft sticks. The children used the craft sticks for making patterns for our morning math…

The simplest holiday invitation to play ever! Teach Preschool

After the children completed a few patterns, they would give Mr. Hayden or I a shout so we could see what they came up with and then when they were finished, they sorted the sticks back into the red or green boxes so that someone else could come along and open the box…

The simplest holiday invitation to play ever! Teach Preschool

At the other table, the boxes were transformed into our temporary holiday salt boxes along with the color words “red” and “green” printed on sentence strips…

The simplest holiday invitation to play ever! Teach Preschool

We also set out a few small Christmas cookie cutters for the children to explore different shapes in our holiday salt boxes too…

The simplest holiday invitation to play ever! Teach Preschool

And during circletime, we put our book and a few book tokens (extenders) in a gift box to spark a little curiosity about what we might be reading that day…

The simplest holiday invitation to play ever! Teach Preschool

Before opening the box, I asked the children to try and guess what they thought might be inside the box. One of my students immediately answered, “There is a book and some Christmas ornaments!”  Yep, she peaked inside the box before circletime, after all, I did leave a shiny gold box sitting right out in the open and opening it up to see what is inside is simply irresistible…

The simplest holiday invitation to play ever! Teach Preschool

We have plenty days ahead to fill up our gift boxes with fun things to do around the classroom so when you see a box sitting in the background of one of our photos, you can be pretty sure that it was intentionally placed there to invite our students to come and play, create, discover, and explore…

The simplest holiday invitation to play ever! Teach Preschool

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Deborah J Stewart

Deborah J Stewart

Every time I think I know everything I need to know about teaching young children, God says, "Hold on a minute!" and gives me a new challenge.

Let me tell ya...

With each new challenge that you overcome, you will find yourself better equipped and more passionate about teaching young children.

God didn't call wimps to lead, teach, or care for His children. Nope, he has high expectations, so get ready. You will have to give your very best but after teaching for over 30 years, I can tell you that it is a wonderful and rewarding journey.

Whenever your calling feels hard, just remember, 'He who began a good work in you (and in the children you serve) will be faithful to complete it.'

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