I so enjoy Christmas picture books. I really enjoy Christmas storytimes although we don't program in December anymore. Thank goodness I have grandchildren that I can do 'storytime' with at my home. I have a set of 10 Christmas Candles that is fun for counting to 10, and then subtracting again.
I hotglued the yellow felt flames to a gold glitter pipe cleaner piece and the pipe cleaner to the white felt candle. I also hotglued the green felt holly pieces and used red slick fabric paint for the berries. Check out the other posts on Flannel Friday @ Mel's Desk. There are some really cute ideas on the Flannel Friday Christmas Pinterest board. Check it out here! Have questions about Flannel Friday? Check out the Flannel Friday official blog. Merry Christmas!
I'm starting the year off with a basic theme of Shapes! I saw this post about Summer Shapes @ Mel's Desk and loved the idea of using shapes to make seasonal items. I decided to make a winter set for our shape theme. I've got circles for a snowman, a square shape for his hat, triangles for trees, a rectangle for a sled and for tree trunks. This game/activity will go well with the book, Shape Capers!
We used this theme as a Thanksgiving tie-in. There are so many great 'friend' books that this theme would be easy to do any time of year. I like to do it at Valentine's too. I used my pellon set of 10 little children/friends that I made many years ago. I'd really like to either, remake them bigger out of pellon, or try making the set out of felt. I'll just add that to my to-do pile ;) I made up a quick little 'counting to 10' rhyme to use with them and then used them to play, "Which One Is Missing?" after the rhyme. To make this a little easier for younger preschoolers you could use only 5 of the easiest colors; red, blue, green, yellow and pink. I think (it was a really long time ago) I used illustrations from the book, The Best of Totline Newsletter edit. by Jean Warren; illustrated by Kathy Kotomaimoce.This is an awesome resource!! 
