If you are looking for a great holiday gift, not completely focused on Christmas, look no further. I have used this Handprint Calendar from Teaching with Mel D for YEARS! (She updates it each year) I used it with my second graders, third graders, and fourth graders....and now I use it with my toddlers as grandparent gifts!
There are a few options for some of the months (ie: You CAN do a Santa for December, if you want!). There is also an Australia spelling version, which is a cool little bonus.
In the classroom, I would sort the calendar by color. So, if I needed a light blue for the snowman pages and the snowflake pages, I would have a little assembly line - call over 5 kids, paint everyone's hands, handprint one kid at a time for both of the pages that need that color, and send them to the sink right after to wash up. The trickiest pages are when you need multiple colors, so I saved those for last!
I never lost instructional time to get this project done - I always did it during recess or when I let the kids eat lunch in the classroom as a treat. Which is why I started this project EARLY. Like Thanksgiving time early.
I also made sure to get some Sharpies for drawing faces and some googly eyes. Not for every page, but the googly eyes really do add something special to the pages with little critters!
Oh and the actual calendar pages with dates come color or black and white. I typically printed color because I let my students color in as much as I could, but they never had time to finish the entire calendar, so it made sense to print those pages in color so the coloring part would focus on the pictures near the handprints.
So, check out some of our examples from this year. These are my kids (ages 3 and 1), which is why there are two handprints on some pages. Instead of alternating, I just squeezed two handprints on the pages where I could fit them. It actually looks very cute! I'm impressed with our work! :)
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