SEWING-PART 1; PRACTICE

For the month of January, we focused on sewing.  We had dabbled a little with sewing in December with some embroidery thread and felt.  The children really enjoyed it, so I thought it would be great to focus on sewing for a whole month.  Sewing is such a grounding activity.  A few of the children's grandparents sew and it can be such a bonding activity to do.  It is also great for building fine motor muscles in their hands which will help the children as they start writing more and more.  We started practicing putting yarn in and out of embroidery hoops with burlap.

After practicing on the embroidery hoops with yarn, we moved to meat trays with embroidery thread.  The children drew a picture on the tray and then stitched the picture.  It was tricky to poke the needles through the trays!

This child made part of his family.

One of our challenges was knowing where to put the needle in from the bottom!

CHRISTMAS CRAFTS

Tracing her hand for antlers :)

The children traced and cut their hands out to make some Rudolf the Reindeer puppets!  They glued red pompom noses and added eyes and a mouth with markers.  Then they decided to have a puppet show all on their own.  Such a creative group!!!

We had such fun tracing our hands for our puppets that we thought we would try again and make some beautiful wreaths.  They came out great!!  Everyone traced their own hands and some of the kids cut out the hands on their own too.  So tricky, great fine motor practice!

The next project we worked on was to make Christmas trees.  Each child was given 5 triangles from big to small.  The children could choose to arrange the triangles however they liked, but  before they glued, they needed to lay out the pieces and make a plan (I did quickly show them how they could put the pieces from big to small, but I love that they chose to do it the way they envisioned).   Then they added circle ornaments and stars.  They also used glitter glue for decorating. 

While they were busy working, I remembered I had a bunch of ribbon, so I took it out.  They have really been into lacing, weaving, and tying the past few months so they immediately got the hole punch so they could tie their ribbons right into their pictures.  I really liked how this child chose to run the ribbon up the side and then put it across to the top of the tree.

The children really became engaged in this project and I just love how each tree was so individual.

Working with ribbon and adding the finishing touches!