Foam Christmas Tree and Snowmen

 

Our early December has brought quite a few chilly, rainy days, so I was very thankful when I came across this post from Fun at Home with Kids.

All you need for this incredible, reusable activity is "special glue" (water), foam pieces, and a window (or mirror). When I find things like this online, I always have the same thoughts:

1. This is GENIUS! Which is always followed by...
2. WHY have I never thought of this?!?!

We decided to go with Christmas tree decorating and save the snowman fun for January. I started by cutting out small, medium, and large trees with corresponding stars. I'm so grateful for the large random bag of multicolored shapes I saved from my teaching days. They worked perfectly as ornaments for the trees!

Gabriella helped right alongside me, cutting her happy little heart away. (Cutting foam is really rather soothing. Well, at least Gabriella and I think so :)) I loved when she realized some of the scraps from her cutting were squares and rectangles that would serve perfectly as presents under the trees! She also did an incredible job cutting out three different-sized candy canes for decorating. It was challenging, but she was rewarded with pure joy when she accomplished it.

When it was time to play, I laid out two white tubs—one to hold the pieces and the other to hold a small amount of "special glue" (water) for sticking the foam to the window.

My littles would pick up a piece, dip it in the glue, and place it on the window. So easy, so fun! I did place a towel under the play area for two reasons: the floor was cold from the weather outside, and I have a two-year-old, haha! Even if it was only a 1/4 cup of water, I didn't expect any of it to remain once Mikey got a hold of it. :)

We also experimented with using paint brushes to paint the "glue" on the window. I think we all liked that a bit better than the water tub. There's just something about holding a paintbrush in your hand that makes you feel like you're doing something extra special.

I really loved all the learning I got to sneak in with this activity while they played.

We talked about the size of the trees and the relationship between them.

We also worked on following verbal directions like,

• "Place a yellow circle on the largest tree"
• "Place two presents under the medium size tree"

We even got a chance to reinforce directional terms like,

• "Place the star on top of the tree"
• "Place the ornament under, beside, to the right, to the left"

We used the trees to help sort shapes as we talked about their attributes.

A few days into playing with this activity that I realized we could utilize the window clings on my window. So we did. :) With a little color sorting and graphing...

Then with number representation and counting...

We really have enjoyed decorating our foam trees. I think what I love most about this activity is that I can pack them up and save them for next Christmas. Definitely a win!

& Look how sweet our little snowmen turned out!

 

Gabriella had such a great time helping me with them. We decided to work on them while the boys napped and surprisingly, we finished before they woke AND had a little time to play! Yay!

We followed the same structure we had with our foam Christmas trees; one small, one medium and one large. I decided to number the three circle body parts of each snowman to make it a bit easier when putting them together. I used a pencil to write the number 1 on each of the "large" snowman's body parts, 2 on the "medium" snowman's body parts, and 3s on the "small." I also used a black permanent marker to draw the coal smile onto each snowman's face.

The boys had a great time playing with them too!

 

Oh Josiah! He always goes straight for the unattended cup with "special glue!" He gets such a kick out of playing with the very small amount of water in there!