Santa's Alphabet Beard: Idea #74

As a kid I LOVED school crafts. Especially the ones we would make for the holidays. One of my favorites was making Santa's beard out of cotton balls. We would add a cotton ball every day in December until we got to Christmas day. I loved watching the beard fill up and realizing that Christmas was getting closer. Then, my wonderful mother would hang up the amazing Santa that I had made at school. I am sure she still has it to this day!

Since this is an educational blog, you may be asking how making a beard out of cotton balls could be educational. Well, what if your student could only add a cotton ball after they had mastered a letter sound?

This is how you could do it:

1. Print out a cute picture of Santa's face. Your student can color everything except for the beard. The website I used was: http://www.coloringpages7.com/

2. Draw 26 cotton ball size circles on his beard. You can trace the cotton ball if you want. It doesn't have to be perfect since the cotton balls will cover it up anyway. This is what mine looked like:

3. Write one letter of the alphabet on each circle.

4. Have your student glue a cotton ball on each letter sound that they have mastered. By this time in the year they should know more than just A and M! Once they have filled the beard with cotton balls, let your student add cotton balls to Santa's hat.

Hopefully by Christmas they will have all 26 letter sounds mastered and Santa's beard will be complete! Have fun!