Christmas Activity Cards

'Suppose I could post this idea over at our school blog, but since I haven't posted anything there in ages, I'll post here.  I came across this idea a few weeks ago at the No Time for Flashcards blog... Cut out cute images from wrapping paper to practice patterns.  When I was shopping for wrapping paper last week I looked for something that would work specifically for this and found just the perfect thing!  Check it out!  The pictures on the wrapping paper were all so cute I cut out lots and lots and lots of them!  Yes, kind of took a lot of time.  Then I laminated them and cut them all again!  But there are so many fun things to do with them, and they're durable, I'm going to put keep them in a baggie and store them with the rest of our Christmas things for next year!  

Okay, so some things you can do with these cards...

1. Make patterns.  Start some patterns and see if your child can finish it.  We did ABA, ABBA, ABC, AABB, etc  Then I had Eli make up some patterns on his own.

 2.  Practice Counting.  One row at a time, we laid out the cards and counted how many there were of that kind of picture. 

 3. Practice simple math.  Which row has the most? Which row has the least? Which rows have the same amount? How many more red reindeer are there than yellow reindeer?  How many more monsters than Santas? etc

4. Practice colors.  Which pictures are red? Which pictures are green? Which pictures are blue?

 look how cute they are!

this little guy is my favorite :0)

 5. Addition.  Stacked up the spread of pieces so I could use just a few. 2 red reindeer + 3 green reindeer = how many altogether?

  1 Santa + 4 elves = how many altogether?

 1 Santa + 6 reindeer = how many?

 6. Subtraction.  I put one of each picture out and they had a "party".  But one at a time they "had to leave" so we practiced counting backward.

7. Memory Game.  I knew this would be a little easy because the cutout shape of each picture is a little different, but I was impressed that Eli caught onto that right away and had no troubles finding all the matches.

8. Story telling. I put one of each picture in a bag and we started a story with whatever picture we pulled out.  Then we'd pull out another "character" and add it into the story and pull out another and add it into the story, etc.