Children love cookies. Preschool students love cookies. It is very difficult for young children to give away cookies.

My preschool students are learning about generosity all during the month of December.

They got a head start on their generosity lessons during the week of Thanksgiving when they collected canned foods to share with an organization in town.

They were already aware of the definition of generosity when December rolled in and they began collecting coats and sweaters in the coat drive.

Next came the cookies. My students baked cookies, individually wrapped them in plastic wrap, and tied a string around the top to place them in a big basket to share with others in the school. This is the third year of being generous with our cookies and the students are doing very well with knowing those cookies are for others, not for them.

December is the birthday month of the game Bingo. My preschool students enjoyed playing many games of Bingo in class. They played Alphabet Bingo, Shapes Bingo, and Christmas Bingo.

These Bingo games are great ways to learn letters and shapes and also learn to match the items on each individual card.

I found this activity at pre-k pages and adapted it to my preschool class during our lessons on the Polar Express. 

The graphing chart was available online and I printed out the small pictures of things from the story (or the movie). The students had to match the pictures in the correct column and then count when column had more items and less items.

This is a great math activity and a great way to learn how to read a graph as well as recall things from stories.

This Christmas tree game is similar to the Gingerbread number game that my preschool students played during Gingerbread week.

I drew and cut out a Christmas tree shape and wrote numbers 1-5 on the tree. The students took turns to roll the die. They had to determine the number rolled on the die then place a teddy bear counting piece on the correct number on the tree.

This game is great for number recognition and identification and counting as well as learning to take turns in a game.

A great fine motor activity and math activity during the Christmas season is a gift wrapping center.

I set up the housekeeping center with small toys, boxes, and gift wrap paper. I cut the paper into different sized sheets. The object of the gift wrap center is for preschool students to determine the size of paper to fit the toy or box in which they want to wrap. Then they must fold the paper over and around the object neatly so it looks like a nicely wrapped gift.

This is a great activity in math by measuring the paper to the correct object. This is also a great activity for preschool students to use their hands and fingers to fold paper. They must take their time to fold it straight and evenly around the object.

The preschool students capped off Gingerbread week with a fun time of Gingerbread tasting. Rather than just sit down to eat cookies, we added in a math activity with the taste test.

We made a First Bite Chart. I divided a paper into 5 columns. I drew a gingerbread figure at the top of each column. Each figure was missing a part of the gingerbread: head, left arm, right arm, left leg, or right leg. 

As I gave each student a gingerbread cookie to taste, we wrote the name of each student underneath the correct gingerbread on the chart. If the student bit the head first, his name was written in the head column. If he bit the right leg first, his name was written in that column. Most of the students in my class chose to bite the head of the gingerbread man first.

This is a great activity for learning to graph and count items on a graph or chart. It adds some humor to the activity as well. The students wanted to taste a second and third cookie to bite another part off.