This month has been filled with fun winter-themed activities and a lot of fun. This post contains affiliate links.
December seems to be going fast, and this month we have been busy with Cozy Winter Senses, our December theme from Experience Early Learning. One of our topics this week was Cookies (Week 3, Lesson 13), and as you can imagine this topic was popular! Everyone was excited to share their favorite cookies, if they have started making cookies for Christmas and if they like to help bake them or just eat them. The winning cookie in our class was chocolate chip.
At our art center they got to make a cookie plate. There were cookie cutouts in the shape of a star, a circle, and a gingerbread man. We mixed shaving cream and glue and put it in a ziplock bag, cutting the corner to make an icing 'applicator.' I sat out a bowl of sprinkles and popsicle sticks for them to spread their "frosting" with. They were excited to get started.
While this was a messy art project they had a lot of fun decorating their cookies. They were eager to put sprinkles on! This definitely turned into a sensory experience because they were covered in shaving cream at the end of it. Shaving cream creates a fun sensory experience for preschoolers and it's easily washable.
The popsicle sticks came in handy to help them spread the shaving cream mixture around their cookies. Some students would squeeze a lot of shaving cream out on top of one cookie and they were able to divide it up between the rest of the cookies on their plate. Some students carefully placed sprinkles on their cookies while others put a lot. It was fun to see how they chose their process.
They did a pretty good job resisting the urge to lick anything, as it was tempting! At times they would forget that it wasn't actual frosting we were working with, but shaving cream (and that wouldn't taste very good).
In our Experience Preschool curriculum box we received the title display and inspiration photo (a fun picture of beautifully decorated cookies for inspiration), the cookie cutouts, paper plates and sprinkles. It was easy to gather the rest of the materials and create this fun art center for my students.
When art and sensory combine, it's a fun experience! Cookies can come in all shapes, and can be both similar and different from each other, just like people. This was a good lesson behind our cookie topic.
