Activities to Go Along with the Movie The Santa Clause

Thanksgiving is over and Christmas has officially arrived at our house!

It has become an annual holiday tradition to put up our tree and decorate the house the day after Thanksgiving.  This year I also made time to sit down and plan a fun month of school.


Each day of school we'll watch a Christmas movie and I planned all our day's activities around that movie (as much as possible). 

Each day:
  •  we'll read a story
  • work on some math
  • practice writing (or language arts)
  • have a special snack
  • work on an art project and make a gift. 
 I started telling the boys about our plans right away and they were excited to start school today.  The boys eagerly raced upstairs this morning to tell me all about our elf's antics last night (another fun tradition we started years ago when Ian was in Kindergarten).  They were surprised to find that he had gotten into some of our candy!


Once they were all settled down, fed and, dressed we started school.  The boys started by deciding who got to color in the number on our Advent countdown tree and then we began math.


They each had a worksheet and the older boys were able to work on theirs in the car while we ran around to the bank, post office, and to trampoline.  The older two boys had a multiply and color sheet and discovered that they were making a Santa.  Ian managed to finish his whole sheet by the time we arrived at trampoline.  He's the only one who signed back up for trampoline this session since the younger two boys thought they needed a bit of a break.

The younger boys brought along their math and I helped them when they needed it while Ian attended trampoline.  Evan had a 100's chart art project that he colored according to the directions to make a Santa hat.  The boys really enjoyed these math sheets.  I think the idea of coloring in a mystery picture did it!

Evan recognized the pattern in the 100's chart very quickly
and knew all of his numbers!

Alec did awesome on multiplying

finished math and color word sheets
Once home, we read Stories of Santa and I had the older two boys write a short story on some Christmas paper.  Alec chose to write about his favorite part of Christmas while Ian chose to write about his favorite Christmas Gift.  Not all that surprising Alec's favorite part of Christmas is getting presents.  Ian's favorite gift from Santa was his Bruder excavator.  They each came up with a good four sentences about their topic.



While they were working on that Evan had a Santa coloring page where he had to read the color words.

We finished up our school work by making a Santa ornament.  I helped each boy with this craft project since I figured the best way to adhere the ribbon and buckle would be with hot glue.


We took red ball ornaments and squeezed a band of hot glue around the middle.  While using a Popsicle stick the boys pressed a strip of black ribbon around the ornament.

They each picked out a buckle from my bin of Hodgepodge Hardware from Stampin Up! (though I saw these same ornaments made using the top from a soda can) and we hot glued that over the ribbon.

Voila!

We cleaned up everything and sat down to watch The Santa Clause while eating milk and freshly baked chocolate chip cookies.

The Santa Clause (Full Screen Special Edition)



Yum! A perfect start to our holidays!

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