The Grinch!

Honey Pot is 3.5 years old

Little M&M is 21 months old

Book

We started our fun Grinch unit by reading the book How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Honey Pot is obsessed with Dr. Seuss these days, so I knew she would really enjoy these activities.

Grinch Snack

I found the recipe for this snack at a blog called Preschool Alphabet. Bagged popcorn + green candy melts. Oh my, was this tasty! We enjoyed these while doing the next activity...

We also used green food coloring in our milk.

Grinch Cartoon

I did a Google search for the original Grinch movie, and found a reliable site to watch it on. The cartoon is just 25 minutes. They kids munched on their Grinch popcorn and Grinch milk, and absolutely loved the movie!

Grinch Coloring Page

I found and printed a simple coloring page as a quick activity after the movie.

I made one too, to use in our next activity.

Bixby, our Elf guest, saw my coloring page and decided to play with it as a mask the next morning. Silly elf!

Pin the Heart on the Grinch Game

I saw a few versions of this on Pinterest, and it looked like fun. I'm not very good at freehand drawing, so I usually print out templates for everything. But since this was so big, I had to try! The body is made from 3 sheets of construction paper taped together. I copied an image of the Grinch that I found on the Internet. I think it came out all right! I drew a small heart on him, and cut out three hearts, each bigger than the last. Because, well, his heart grew three sizes, remember?

The kids had lots of fun placing the larger hearts onto the Grinch! They played again and again!

Grinch Slime

The recipe for this comes from Growing a Jeweled Rose. 

The kids helped me mix 2 bottles of Elmer's glitter glue + peppermint extract + 1 1/2 cups warm water into one bowl. Then into the next bowl we mixed 3/4 teaspoons of Borax (which he had on hand already from our crystallized hearts experiment last Valentine's Day) + 1 1/3 cups of warm water. 

Then we mixed both solutions together, and immediately saw our slime begin to form!

We dumped out the excess water and brought our slime upstairs to play with on Honey Pot's craft table.

Ooey, gooey!

Stretchy!

And, oh so sparkly! LOVE this stuff!

Both of them were making caterpillars...

"It's a rectangle!"

Then they rolled their slime into balls to see if it would bounce.

It did!

They played for this for a long, time. Great Grinch fun!

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Christmas Trees

Honey Pot is 3.5 years old
Little M&M is 21 months old

To see last year's Christmas tree unit, click here!

Book

We bought this last year, and have really fallen in love with it. We read it to jump-start this week's tree unit!

Magnetic Pom Poms

Many of the following are quiet-time activities that I did with just Honey Pot, while Little M&M was napping. Ever since she gave up her naps we've tried to do things like this to keep her busy, yet calm and self-sufficient. I made this in Photoshop Elements because I couldn't find one online that I liked. Notice my printer was running out of colored ink though!

Maze

Honey Pot really enjoys mazes! This one came from Busy Bee Kids Printables. They have tons of these, and at varying levels of difficulty too. This one is the easiest, for preschool age. Honey Pot flew threw this without issue!

Pattern Blocks

We love our pattern block set! This festive printable comes from PreKinders.

Tracing Lines

One of Honey Pot's favorite worksheet activities is tracing lines. This one comes from the Education website.

Christmas Star - Counting Practice

These come from Confessions of a Homeschooler, and actually go from 1-20! I only did 1-12 though, for now. After the New Year (as I predict we'll have a clock activity at around that time), I'll focus more on 13-20 with Honey Pot. She really enjoyed this! The trees with more ornaments became a little tricky, only because she couldn't remember which she counted already. Great number practice and a nice confidence booster for her!

Size Ordering - Craft

I have seen many of these on Pinterest. I love the ones that use patterned paper, so I dug deep into my old scrapbooking stash! I cut the paper first into a triangle shape, then into slices.

Honey Pot had to start with the biggest, and glue them onto her paper in size order.

Add a star to the top!

She also made a miniature, card-sized version of this for her pen pal in Canada!

Felt Board

We created this last year, but I wanted to pull it out for the kids to play with again.

First I assembled the tree, then gave it to Little M&M to put ornaments on!

He didn't quite get what I meant when I said to put the presents under the tree!

Next it was Honey Pot's turn!

Helping his sissy...

Ta-da! Nice teamwork!

Music - O Christmas Tree

As with last year, we pulled out our Mickey Mouse keyboard book, and played "O Christmas Tree." Honey Pot pushed the button that corresponds to that page of music, so we could hear it...

...then afterward she followed along to the lights to play the song herself!

Bubble Wrap Craft

I loved this idea from No Time for Flashcards! We have painted bubble wrap once before. Remember Honey Pot's Little Mermaid birthday party? Such fun! First I provided the kids with bubble wrap, green paint and a paintbrush.

Then, using a page that I printed a tree template onto, they pressed the paper over their paint.

We wound up with something like this.

They played with some spare bubble wrap for a few minutes. Then once the pages had somewhat dried, we added red ornaments using q-tips and paint!

After I had cut them out, the kids glued them to a piece of construction paper.

And added stars for the tops!

Little M&M made an extra card-sized one for his pen pal! This is his first card to her, and we're so excited to start their correspondence!

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