Revised Christmas Party Question

For my daughters 1st grade class, we are collecting old socks for snowmen. We'll be making this -http://www.bhg.com/christmas/crafts/friendly-sock-snowmen/

We're using rice or beans to fill, and buying a bag of cheap buttons and a few other things... it will be a very inexpensive.

For a snack, take sugar cookies already baked. Give them some icing and sprinkles so they can decorate them. Or if there are food restrictions, small pretzel sticks dipped in chocolate.

you could have a table where they decorate a cupcake or a cookie. that's a combo. don't do anything with liquid glue, it wont dry fast enough. If your activity needs glue, use glue sticks. Also you can do face painting or fake tatoos. Kids LOOOOVE that stuff. You can do a "make mom a gift" activity station. Lots of big platic beeds and that rubbery string people make braided keychains from and help the kids make mom a necklace.

Activities: Snow/Clean Mud in the sensory table or a bin, Reindeer food, Animal tracks( white/loght colored playdough and toy animals to make foot prints in the "snow" dough, Shaving cream"snow" with popcicle sticks to make pictures, matching mittens/snowflakes game(like memory), ice cube art (powdered tempra paint on plate/paper use ice cube as medium to paint on paper, melting ice will mix with powdered tempra),

Snacks: snowmen snacks or snow man "poop" made with marshmellows, or snowmensnack made with english muffins and cream cheese with items to make the face and body, Bird food ( offer different items the children can take small spoonfuls of to make their own child/classroom friendly bird food, or premake trail mix and let them scoop some into little cups) cheerio necklaces, hot cocoa(warm cocoa, and make your own hot cocoa(dry) to take home, banana snowmen (cut bananas into circles have the children put 3 slices on a skewer, decorate with honey coconut, raisens, carrots etc)

Here are a few I've seen my daughters teachers do.

Take different pieces of wrapping paper and laminate them. Have the children pick something on the paper to count. Then circle with a dry erase marker the items they are going to count...its a way to have them practice counting. Wipe the marker off and reuse.

Then another is number bingo, you could make the sheets in a Christmas tree design. Put the numbers in the tree, then have someone call off the numbers. -My daughters teacher did this at Valentines day, but with a heart design.

Oh another one, my daughter who is in first grade came home saying she did this year - they made 3d shapes with marshmallows and pretzel sticks...might be another educational activity related to winter time.

Religious school or public school? If public school you could do a station with either paper snowflakes or tree cookies to decorate (make the cookies, let the kids add icing and sprinkles), a station with dreidels (easy game to play) and a station with henna hand decorating (use washable markers - http://www.crayola.com/lesson-plans/detail/celebrate-with...) for Ramadan.

Add a face painting station. Give the kids an option to have a snowflake, small snowman, Xmas tree or something small to be painted on their cheek. We did this in my son's class in K, 1st and 2nd and it is always a hit.

Just a few ideas for games - fill the stocking - have a mini race to see who can run back and forth to a stocking to fill it using cotton balls and kitchen spoons to see who will fill first, unwrap the gift - see who can unwrap their gift first but the kids must wear oven mitts (or can use stockings) while doing it, blind snowman - kids draw snowman while eyes are closed and must follow the drawing directions the parents give them (ex: make 1 large circle on bottom, one medium in middle and one small on top, put 3 circles for buttons in middle circle, draw hat on top of small circle, etc) and give a little prize for who comes closest to following directions, snow shoveling - place vaseline on the end of the childrens nose and without using their hands they pick up cotton balls with their noses and transport them to a bowl to see who can do X amount first. Good luck at the party!

Games! There are a ton of kids Christmas/winter game ideas online.

I am putting together my kindergartener's class party and I'm planning on giving each child a bell and we'll sing jingle bells together at the end of the party.

Reindeer food I did it last year w/my dd's kindergarten class the kids loved it http://christmas.organizedhome.com/gifts-crafts-gift-tags...

If there are not peanut/tree nut allergies you can make pine cone bird feeders...decorative ribbon, hot glue gun, bird seed, crisco shortening, 2 pans or bowls (1 to pour seed in the other for the shortening) an adult needs to hot glue a decorative ribbon on the top of the pine cone . Roll the pine cone in the shortening get it coated then roll into the seeds.
This project did get a little messy but not bad. You can also tie little bells onto the ribbon. I also bought one of the foam craft kits from Michaels or Joann of a Santa claus face along w/a roll of magnets & the kids made Santa magnets. My other craft was Christmas ball ornaments (clear plastic balls) also at Michaels filled w/the fluffy white fake snow & each child brought in a wallet size picture which we fit down into the balls on the outside we decorated the balls w/clear snowflake stickers, snowman...a few days before I used a paint pen & wrote "Christmas 2010" on them to give them time to dry before the kids/adults handled them. I also turned this into a gift for the teacher from the class I decorated an ornament for her & put a class picture w/the year on the ball. You can also make rice krispie treats the nite before cut them into shapes & allow the kids to decorate them w/frosting & sprinkles, make a friendship salad have each child bring in cut up fruit from home & have them add their fruit to the bowl, pigs in a blanket do really well. : ) Have fun!

You could have Christmas cut-out cookies and let the kids decorate with their own frosting, sprinkles, etc. Or bring several items & let them create their own trail mix.