Crafts, Cookies and Christmas Tales Promote Literacy

While you might not link literacy to holidays like Arbor Day or the Summer Solstice, Christmas is an altogether different story. Opportunities to promote reading, writing and language skills are as abundant as the thousands of twinkling lights on the 74-foot Norway spruce in New York’s Rockefeller Center. Let me count the ways…

•  Create a written wish list for Santa or have your child write a letter to baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the wise men, or the shepherds. Kids are so honest and their perspectives are funny and sometimes very wise. Nine times out of 10, you’ll end up with a priceless keepsake to enjoy reading years down the road.
• Make homemade Christmas cards with your children. Print out colored card templates and then encourage your students to personalize the inside with a handwritten note. (Snowman card, wide-eyed Santa card, Christmas tree card ) Or, they can make a card from scratch. If their penmanship is legible, encourage them to address the envelope too. Christmas stickers are a good option for very young children who want to participate in this card-making craft.
• Make sugar cookies together from scratch. Help your children read the recipe, interpret the ingredient amounts, and mix them chronologically according to the directions. While children may need help with the oven, they can master the cookie cutters and sprinkles easily and with much gusto!

 

     Cookie Cutter Butter Cookie Recipe

     1 cup butter (not margarine), softened

     1 cup sifted powdered sugar

     2¼ cups of all-purpose flour

     1½ teaspoons of real vanilla extract

     Optional: sprinkles, icing, flaked coconut

To make this recipe, gather all your ingredients and preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Now, you are ready to start.

First, beat butter in a bowl at medium speed until soft and creamy. Then, add sugar a little at a time, mixing well. Next, add vanilla and flour and beat well. Lightly flour a surface and roll dough to ¼-inch thickness. Use your favorite cookie cutter and cut dough into Christmas trees, lambs, angels, etc. Place them on a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper. Add sprinkles and bake at 375 degrees for 8 minutes or until edges start to brown. Remove from the oven. Then use a spatula to place cookies on a cooling rack until they are cool.

Note: If you use a lamb-shaped cookie cutter, sprinkle cookies with coconut before baking. If using icing, decorate the cookies after they are cool. (Hint: Parchment paper is the key to successful cookie baking. It’s available in the paper goods aisle near the wax paper.)  

• Read Christmas-themed books, poems and Advent passages together. DLTK offers a great Christmas Alphabet Poem that is perfect for the Sunday school setting or use at home. The website also offers holiday poems, including “Little Donkey” which has a cute graphic for coloring along with the text.
• Sing Christmas carols. If you go caroling, take a flashlight and large-print lyrics so following along is easier for young readers and ancient eyes.
• Christmas crafts expand vocabulary and teach hand-eye coordination through cutting, pasting, coloring, beading and stringing. You can make paper snowflakes to hang in the windows, string popcorn and cranberry garlands, glue or tape a paper chain together to help with the Big Countdown, make a KissMas Tree or create handprint Christmas wreaths.
• Bogglesworldesl.com offers nativity-themed crossword puzzles and word searches, which are good vocabulary builders.
• Give books as gifts – whether to family members, the school library or through donations to a literacy group. Books offer immediate enjoyment with long-term educational consequences and forever memories. “The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey” is one of our family favorites. The poignant story is of a Scrooge-like woodcarver and the inquisitive boy and gentle widow who transform his world. The watercolors are spectacular.

Big Universe’s publishing partner Sylvan Dell has added a new Christmas-themed book to BU’s shelves, titled “Christmas Eve Blizzard” by Andrea Vlahakis. Illustrated by Emanuel Schongut, the picture book tells the tender story of a cardinal who is trapped in the snow until rescued by a compassionate boy and his abuelo. The book is appropriate for children 6-12. Although written in English, it includes some Spanish language vocabulary.

 Christmas blessings to you and yours!

UPDATE: (Dec. 11, 2010) To expand on lessons about writing sequentially, BooglesWorldESL.com  has a worksheet titled “How Do You Decorate a Christmas Tree?”  The website also offers big letter alphabet coloring sheets for Christmas. Check them out.

One Comment

• Wendy H says:

  December 11, 2010 at 7:19 pm

  Suzan–you didn’t tell you wrote for a blog!! Hopefully next year (or maybe the one after) Judah will want to make the sugar cookies cut into Christmas shapes with me. Looks GREAT!!