Once again I applaud a book by Tad Hills. Let me introduce you to Duck and Goose: It’s time for Christmas!
It is adorable. Simple, concise illustrations make it great for toddlers and twos.
Duck tries to convince Goose that it’s not time for throwing snowballs and other antics…
…because it is time for Christmas!
Here is a ‘topper’ to complete after you have read the tale:
Remember: Supervise your child. There are small pieces below. This activity was designed for you to complete WITH your child.
1. Using a straight edge and marker, draw a large triangle on a piece of paper. Make a trunk at the bottom by including a rectangle. I made a master and then made copies on green paper because I’ll be doing this activity 20 more times between now and Christmas. You can make your tree on any color of paper that your child wants, be creative!
2. If your child is older have them cut out the tree. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It looks better with some jagged edges!
3. Decorate the tree. Your preschooler can decorate the tree using stickers, punched out circles, glitter, and whatever else you might have handy. I wanted to keep it simple. I started out with using round labels and reinforcement labels then added stickers. The pictures on the stickers added a language component. Their small size added a fine motor challenge for my two year olds.
All of the above came from Walmart except the scattered circles. I made them with a large paper punch. I didn’t want to use glue this week so I haven’t used them, but they are a great option if your preschooler likes to glue. It might look something like this:
As stated above, I like the bold straight lines because I have older preschoolers cut the tree out before decorating it. This week this activity was primarily completed by children who were 26 to 36 months. They had so much fun! How many times was the star placed at the top of the tree? Never! It was great!
What are some of the concepts that you teaching your preschooler with this activity?
1. Fine Motor
- Turning pages
- Peeling small stickers, placing them on paper
- Cutting with scissors
2. Language
- Talk about what is happening in the pictures, don’t limit your self to just reading the words
- Talk about your Christmas tree, what you are doing for Christmas…etc…
3. Preacademics
- Count. Count the stars, count the colors, count the animals….
- Colors, size, shapes
- Stickers – talk about color, size, shape, and whatever is on them
- Attention to task
- Book handling skills
You can purchase Duck and Goose It’s Time for Christmas from Amazon here:
Merry Christmas!
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