Day 2 Montessori-inspired Christmas Activity

Christmas Stars

Today’s activity is a simple sorting activity of making Christmas stars! We see stars everywhere during the Christmas and New Year season. Some stars have lights inside them and shine bright in the night, decking up our homes or Christmas trees. Given this background, let me quickly take you through the activity.

AGE GROUP – 1.5 years onwards

MATERIALS NEEDED

• White or coloured paper

• Cardboard (I used an Amazon packing box lying around)

• Glue

• Scissors

• Colours (optional)

• Baskets/Containers

 TIME REQUIRED FOR ACTIVITY PREPARATION – 15 Minutes

HOW & WHAT TO DO

• Draw some stars on a white or coloured paper. Have them in three different sizes – small, medium & big
• Paste the sheet on a cardboard sheet
• Cut all the stars into individual pieces
• You should keep all the stars of a single colour for sorting
• Give all the differently sized stars to the child. Show which one is of small size, which one is medium & which one is big. Mix all of them and then sort them all into these three categories into 3 different baskets/containers. Sorting is a pre math skill and is very important during these early years to build a strong foundation of Maths in future.
• Mix all the stars again & let your child do the sorting
• Let the child explore with different sized stars, play around with them, let it be a free play session after this.
• Talk about why stars are associated with Christmas

SKILLS DEVELOPED 

• Maths – Learning sizes

• Language building – explore & talk about big, medium, small

• Learning of culture & traditions

HOW TO TWEAK FOR YOUNGER KIDS

• From 6 months onwards, you can give star cut-outs of chapatti or bread and let them explore the shape while you also talk about it. Bonus, they can eat the shape too if they want ☺ It is never too early to stimulate their senses. They may not understand size but they can definitely understand and absorb that it is star shaped.
• For young toddlers, start with just two sizes – big and small. When they are well versed with it, then only introduce medium to avoid overwhelming and confusing the child.

HOW TO TWEAK FOR OLDER KIDS

• You can have stars in different colours and then ask them to sort according to the sizes. It makes it more challenging once they are used to simple sorting exercises.

• You can ask your toddler to arrange the stars in a line according to the size – big, medium and then small. A simple seriation exercise.

• You can have more than three sizes and ask your child to arrange them from the biggest to smallest.

ADDITIONAL LINKS & RESOURCES

I am sharing some links of printables that I will be using for activities in the next few days. Sharing them in advance so that you can take their prints & be ready for the activity I post from tomorrow onwards. Also, you might want to hunt your local market for some nice and simple Christmas decorations like small star, gift, ball, santa etc. I am going to have activities based on them as well. It gives a very hand-on approach to learn about Christmas festivities.

1. Christmas stuff printable:

crazylittleprojects.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Christmasmemorymatchinggame.pdf

2. Christmas story finger puppets:

christianpreschoolprintables.com/wp-content/uploads/CPP/BibleHolidays/Christmas/NativityFingerPuppets.pdf

3. Christmas story cards:

christianpreschoolprintables.com/wp-content/uploads/CPP/BibleHolidays/Christmas/ChristmasStorySequencePack.pdf

4. Nativity Manger printable:

christianpreschoolprintables.com/wp-content/uploads/CPP/FFG/NativityFFGPack.pdf

5. Christmas puzzle:

itsybitsyfun.com/uploads/9/8/7/6/9876061/printable-christmas-puzzle-1114.pdf

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