Celebrate the Christmas holiday by crafting decorations with letters. Create an 8-inch letter "T" template, a 1-inch letter "O" template, and one 3-inch, 4-inch and 5-inch of each capital letter "B" templates for student use in creating a paper Christmas tree. Each student traces the large "T" onto a piece of green construction paper and cuts it out using safety scissors. Preschool students trace and cut out two of each sized capital letter "Bs" in green, and six 1-inch "O" letters on different colored pieces of construction paper. Assemble the paper letter tree with glue by turning the "T" upside-down so the top line is the base for the tree. The "B" letters represent branches and the top of each letter "B" is glued with the straight edge facing toward the tree top in descending sizes to the vertical line of the "T" or tree trunk. Ornaments can be decorated as the letter "Os" and glued to branches or the trunk of the tree for paper decoration.
Read one of many gingerbread books such as "The Gingerbread Baby" by Jan Brett, "The Gingerbread Man" by Jim Aylesworth or "The Gingerbread Mouse" by Katy Bratun with the preschool students. Discuss, as a class, the five senses that can be found within the book or used in alternate sentences created by the students. The gingerbread man can be heard, smelled and tasted by the fox while the gingerbread man sees the water and feels the fox head while riding on it. Allow the preschool students to use their imaginations to come up with additions to the story that involve the five senses or find the apparent ones.
Encourage each student to write a story of his own and fold the papers into a book form to take home and "read" to any younger siblings. The teacher writes down the story as dictated by the student and each student illustrates his literary masterpiece. An alternative to creating the story is for the teacher to write a silly story using a blank line instead of the main character's name. For preschool students to practice name-writing, all are instructed to write their names in the blanks included in the story. The story then becomes about them personally. Create a few different silly stories to vary the literature among the group and read the works for the class.
On a piece of mural paper, create a Christmas list similar to that of Santa's which lists the well-behaved children to receive gifts during the holidays. Reinforce letter recognition and the sound each letter makes in constructing a preschool Christmas list as a whole class activity. Begin with the letter "A" and encourage the class to think of a child's name and a toy beginning with that letter sound. Continue with each letter of the alphabet and offer suggestions or hints when the class seems to be having trouble. Focus on the sound of the letter instead of only the written letter when provoking correlated thoughts among the students.