PeeWees: Fancy Nancy Splendiferous Christmas

[I looove that Lisa picked Fancy Nancy for our first Christmas book in PeeWees.  It is visual, fun, and a favorite at our house.  It takes the focus off store bought things, and puts it on family and the creative process, one of my favorite topics.  Plus it teaches cool fancy words!  And when I walked in to drop off Poppy, I erupted into uncontrollable giggles when I saw Lisa.  I had to take an iPhone pic on the spot.  You can see why.  I could die.]

Fancy Nancy: Splendierous Christmas by Jane O'Connor

She has a bunch of Fancy Nancy books in the series. They all use bigger words, like “heirloom,” and then explain that it’s just a fancy word for old and valuable. It’s a clever way to teach a larger vocabulary.

I wanted to focus on the visuals of Christmas – the decorations, trees, etc. – thinking that would help the PeeWees better relate to all of the activity occurring around them right now. This book walks through the decorating for Christmas, wrapping of presents, making cookies, buying a Christmas tree, etc.

Open Play – Toss cloth snowballs into different-sized buckets. They really loved this and would yell, “I did it!” when they got one in the bucket. I was pleasantly surprised how long this activity kept their attention.

Circle Time – They each wore a “fancy” Christmas headband as we sang the stand up song. Then we counted 12 stuffed ornaments – each of them had to walk over to the tree, get an ornament, bring it back to the group and we’d count to that number. We marched and did the alphabet then read the book. They immediately got that I was dressed as “Fancy Nancy.” As I mentioned to Julia, Henry was clearly the most disturbed by the ridiculousness of my hair – it was pretty funny.

On a side note – Bodie has mentioned no less than a dozen times over the past two weeks to various friends and family that “Mommy was the farmer and we were the turkeys,” referring to the Run Turkey Run book activity in the yard. Acting out the book clearly connected with him. This gave me the idea to “be” Fancy Nancy today, hoping the visual will increase their learning.

Snack -  The healthy snack was banana and raisin snowmen. The unhealthy snack was Christmas cookies and milk. In the book, she decorates cookies. So the PeeWees frosted their own cookies and then ate them.

Activity 1 – Christmas caroling. They sing Christmas carols in the book, so we all got bells and learned Jingle Bells.

I LOVED when mid-jingle bell song, Bodie stops singing,looks at Poppy and says, "You have to sing." And she clearly and calmly replies, "I will sing once you guys teach me the words." Then smiles and they all continue on. Classic. Love the Popster!

Craft – Tree topper. Fancy Nancy accidentally breaks her most valued tree topper. She’s sad and her grandfather says, “Let’s improvise!”…a fancy word for use whatever we have. And they make a new tree topper out of a paper plate, pom poms, pipe cleaners, and paint. They really got into the details and “stuff” for their tree toppers.

Closing – We re-capped what we’d done and re-read the book. I tried to point out the more common Christmas decorations in the books – Christmas stockings, candy canes, ornaments, angels, etc. These are definitely very new to them and the repetition was good for them to try and grasp what they are.

Activity 2 – We went out to the yard for the last five minutes to smell the “aroma,” (that’s fancy for smell) of the trees.

Good day. Lots of positive sharing between the kids (bells, ornaments, snowballs, etc) and TONS of conversation. All four of them are really verbal now which is great.