With just a few Christmas tweaks, your writing station can be a big hit!
Our Students love the writing center at Christmas time and this is why. There are ornaments to decorate, cards to write, and fun holiday colors to explore.
It can be challenging to figure out what to display in the writing center. What will get my students to “want to” come and write, draw, or color? How can I keep the writing center fresh and inviting to our children?
Adding the Fun
Setting out card and letter making materials have been a great addition! The children love those cheap Dollar Tree cards and will sit and draw on them, deliver them, and write words on them all day long.
We have had our Christmas writing station up for several days now and the children never seem to tire of it! Â We try to slightly vary the materials that we offer each day to keep it interesting to the children. Collage materials are easy to organize and switch out of our handy dandy produce trays.
Other Things to Add
We set out wrapping paper scraps, Christmas cards, envelopes, stickers, ribbon, paint chips, and pom poms, along with scissors, glue, and writing tools. Â For our older children who are ready to write them, we also added some commonly used words and phrases, such as to, from, love, Merry Christmas, and Happy Holidays.
But perhaps the one element that  never changes, though, is the one thing that continues to make this center so inviting for our children.  Each child has their own mailbox…
Our “mailboxes” are our DIY friendship blocks that we created at the beginning of the school year. Â They are made of simple, sturdy cardboard paper tubes. Â Each child’s picture is taped to their very own tube.
We went back later and added the children’s names to each tube too which helped with writing letters to each other. These friendship blocks make perfect the little mailboxes for our writing station…
The children have been busy at work, creating letters and cards for one another. Â Sometimes their creations end up in their own mailboxes for them to take home. Â But more often than not, the children carry on this season’s spirit of giving and stuff their friends’ mailboxes with their creations…
Every day, our writing station stays busy with children writing, coloring, cutting, and creating…
We will, of course, use our writing station to create cards for our parents…
And we may even wrap our parent gifts at our writing station. Â But be warned. Â If you set out wrapping paper and tape, your children may just begin wrapping up classroom toys…
Pre-literacy and fine motor skills are always important elements of an early childhood program. Â But I think promoting the spirit of giving is equally important in young children. Â And our Christmas writing station does just that…