New Year's Eve Archives - JDaniel4s Mom

New Year’s STEAM Activity Drawing a Countdown Ball

December 27, 2018 By Deirdre

This New Year’s STEAM activity invites children young and old to draw a countdown ball. By the time your children complete the algorithm steps displayed the worksheets their countdown ball will be done. It will be exciting to see how each ball turns out. Every child will display their own creativity as they create their countdown ball. Just the way a coder uses theirs to create computer code.

What is an Algorithm?

I teach my students in the computer lab that it is the series of steps needed to complete a task. A computer needs to follow specific steps in the right order to do what you ask it to. A coder sat down and put those steps in order using a code or computer language long before your students sat down to work on it.

Before Starting You May Want to Read a Book

Your children may not know a lot about New Year’s Eve. You may want to read them a book about it. It will give your children some background information it. Below are some wonderful New Year’s Eve themed books.

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New Year’s STEAM Activity Set

The New Year’s STEAM set includes three worksheets. Let me walk you through each of them.

Basic New Year’s STEAM Activity

Your children will need for you to read to them what each step in the algorithm on this worksheet says. It invites your children to draw a circle and decorate it with basic shapes. You may want to share with your children the shapes they can use to decorate their ball.

Editable New Year’s STEAM Activity

This worksheet features an editable space for the upcoming year. You will be able to change the year on this worksheet so you can use it over and over again. It also displays four basic shapes children can use to decorate their countdown ball.

Exploring Symmetry

Older children will have fun exploring symmetry as they decorate their ball. They will need to try to decorate the inside of the circle and its outside edge symmetrically. Children can even try to make the background symmetrical. The year under the ball will be the only thing not symmetrical.

Downloading the New Year’s STEAM Activity Worksheets

You can download the New Year’s Coding STEAM Activity – Drawing a Countdown Ball Worksheets and open them with Acrobat Reader. You can print out one or all of the worksheets.

If you like this set of coding activities, here are some more you will love:

The Snowy Day Coding Printable

Magical Creatures STEM Coding and Drawing Page

Making Slime Based on an Algorithm

Building an Algorithm with LEGO

Algorithm Coding Game with Treasures

New Year’s Eve Traditions Around the World Printable Book

December 21, 2017 By Deirdre

Several years ago I shared with you a printable chart of New Year’s Eve traditions and customs from around the world. The chart was designed to be printed out in color and shared with children during a family New Year’s gathering or maybe a circle time at school. Children could have fun learning about things countries around the world did on New Year’s Eve. I recently created a printable book that your children can color that features many of the New Year’s Eve traditions displayed on the chart.

New Year’s Eve Traditions Around the World Printable Book

Getting Ready

Before you can share the book with your children at home or school, you will need to print it out. New Years Traditions Book was designed to be printed out in black and white. Your children will add the color to the booklet.

Once you have printed out one book per child, you need to cut each of the pages in half hot dog style. That will separate each of the pages of the book.

Then you will need to staple the page of the book together. You can decide the order of the pages. Of course, you will want to put the cover in the front of the book.

Decorating the Book

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Your children could use a variety of different tools to color the book. We used crayons, but markers or colored pencils would be great to use too.

Children can color in the object of each page as well as add a border of things associated with that country. You could share the book Children’s Illustrated Atlas with them before they start coloring. It features facts and pictures of countries around the world.

On the page, that talks about white clothes your children create a logo for the shirt based on a place or animal in Brazil. A picture of a toucan or the Brazilian flag would be really cool.

If you like this New Year’s activity, here are some more you will love:

Paper Plate Countdown Ball

Zipline New Year’s Ball Drop

Countdown Stars Game

New Year’s Eve Countdown Craft

Sparkling New Year’s Eve Slime

New Year’s Eve Countdown Clock Craft and Printables

December 19, 2017 By Deirdre

This is the second in a series of posts that feature New Year’s Eve activities. Yesterday I shared a STEM activity that features a New Year’s Thaumatrope Printable Set. Today I have fun paper plate countdown clock craft to share with you. It features a clock face that displays the numbers one to ten. The printable set also includes a party hat countdown spinner.

Getting Ready to Work on the Countdown Clock Craft

You will need to download theNew Year’s Coundown Clock Craft and Printables Countdown Clock set. It includes black and white and purple clock face printables. There is also a page filled with party hat countdown hands or spinners. We printed our clock face off on white copy paper. The party hats were printed out on white card stock.

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Then you will need to gather the following craft supplies:

<Metallic Marker Pens
Magic Markers
Crayons
Color Pencils
Gold Foil Star Stickers
Gel Pens
Scissors
Glue
Brass Fasteners
Paper Plates

Putting the Countdown Clock Craft Together

Your children will need to glue the clock face down onto the back of a paper plate.

Then they will need to decorate their paper plate. They can draw fun lines and designs around the edge of the plate. If you want them to, you can have them decorate the clock face. We kept our face plain.

They will then need to decorate the party hat spinner. We didn’t fill in the letters in Happy New Year, but you can have your children do that if you like.

Finally, you need to attach the brass fastener to the plate and the party hat spinner. You will need to place a small hole in the spinner and paper plate before you can do that.

Counting Down to New Year’s Eve

Your children will need to point the top of the party hat towards the number ten. Then they will need to slowly turn the hat from the ten all the way around to the one.

When they reach the number one, they can shout “Happy New Year.”

If you like this New Year’s Eve activity, here are some more that I think you will like.

Paper Plate Countdown Ball

Zipline New Year’s Ball Drop

Countdown Stars Game

Fireworks in a Jar

New Year Printables for Kids – Countdown Ball and More

December 28, 2016 By Deirdre

A few years ago JDaniel and I created a paper plate countdown craft for New Years. It is a lot of fun to make. Many of you have visited that post and have made one of your own. This year I thought I would make a version of the craft that you could just print out, cut out, and color. Once I had done that, I sought out other New Year printables for kids that you could share with your kids.

Some of the New Year printables are ones that I created and others come from other sources. Each would be fun for you to share with your children before New Year’s Eve or just after it.

New Year Printables

Countdown Ball

Let me start with the countdown ball printable. This printable has a fun ball. You will find that the ball has shape patterns that repeat from the top of the ball down to its base. This is something you could point out to your children and encourage them to color each of the same shapes the same color. Of course you could just see if they discover it on their own and decide to color them the same color.

You will need to decide if you want to have your children cut out the countdown ball and the number slide on their own. You could easily have both parts cut out ahead of time for them. If you are having them do a number of New Year printables at the same time, you may decide to do that.

More New Year Christmas Printables

Moon and Star Muffin Tin Counting Printable

Printable New Year Activities from Thirty Handmade Days

New Year’s Countdown Activity from Playdough to Plato

New Year’s Eve Learning Pack from 3 Dinosaurs

You will find more New Year printables on my New Year’s Eve board on Pinterest.

Squirrel’s New Year’s Resolution – Read.Explore.Learn.

January 4, 2013 By Deirdre

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Squirrel is so frustrated when it comes to make a New Year’s resolution. She helps each and everyone one of her friends make a their resolutions come to pass, but can’t decide on one of her own. By the end of Squirrel’s New Year’s Resolution by Pat Miller Squirrel with the aid or her friend Rabbit finds out what her resolution will be. In fact she is told by Rabbit that she has been doing it all New Year’s Day. What is Squirrel’s New Year’s resolution? Well, she will help someone everyday.I love the premise of this book. JDaniel and I tried to give a lot to others last year and we have continue to work on the 26 Acts of Kindness for Kids and Families list I posted two weeks ago. We will keep trying to work on our acts of kindess and help someone everyday too.

What did we do to explore Squirrel’s New Year’s Resolution?

Squirrel Peek A Boo Squirrel played hide and seek at the bottom of her friend Skunk’s bed to make her happy when she was sick in bed. We played hide squirrel outside on a nice mostly warm day.

Squirrel's New Year's Resolution - Read.Explore.Learn.- Hide and Seek in the tree

Highlighted Handwriting

JDaniel has been practicing writing his name. This week I had him practice writing his name and the word squirrel with a pencil and a highlighter. He wrote with pencil on the words I wrote with a highlighter and with a highlighter over the words I wrote with pencil. Then I had him write some on his own.I love the idea of using a highlighter as a writing tool. I came cross this idea while visiting the blog Little Moments. It would be a great way work on New Year’s resolutions with kids too.

Stake the Perimeter

Squirrel's New Year's Resolution - Read.Explore.Learn. : Staking Out a Shape

Squirrel helped mole and turtle stake out land for their garden. JDaniel used game tokens and Styrofoam to stake out shapes. He was given yarn to mark off each area he staked. We are reviewing shapes and this was a fun way to work on that review.We have tons of Styrofoam leftover for Christmas present packaging. The game pieces are from a very old game. The game board fell apart and I save the tokens. JDaniel used his favorite rock to pound in the tokens. It is the perfect size for his hand to grasp. Then he used yarn to close in the shape.Here are some wonderful post that linked up last week:

Squirrel's New Year's Resolution - Read.Explore.Learn.- Marshmallow Snowman

Reading Confetti explored the book Snowmen All Year and made wonderful marshmallow snowman.

Squirrel's New Year's Resolution - Read.Explore.Learn. - Toddler Boys Snowman

Crafts and Life with Toddler Boys explored snowmen too. Their book was The Snowman and they made a wonderful snack too.Next week I promised to feature an exploration post that doesn’t involve food.

Squirrel’s New Year’s Resolution was to help others. Do you make New Year’s resolutions?

New Year’s Traditions from Around the World and Lunch

December 31, 2012 By Deirdre

I seriously thought about trying to include a wide variety of symbols of New Year’s traditions in this lunch, but I ended up with just a few.

Here are some of the wonderful New Year’s traditions from around the world I considered:

Suitcase

In Mexico they walk around the outside of their houses with a suitcase while hoping for travels during the year.

Red and Yellow Underwear

In Venezuela and several other countries they wear red or yellow underwear for good luck.

White Clothes

In Brazil some people wear white clothes that represent a desire for peace in the New Year.

Twelve Grapes

In Spain people eat twelve grapes for good luck when the clock starts to chime twelve. One grape for each time the bell chimes.

Black Eyes Peas and Turnip Greens

In the Southern United States some people eat black eyed peas and turnip greens. The peas stand for coins and the turnip greens for money. Eating them is said to bring you prosperity.

New Year’s Traditions in a Lunch

The bento breakfast JDaniel got contains twelve grapes, plain yogurt with confetti sprinkles, a blueberry waffle party hat trimmed with whipped cream along red raspberry spots, and 2013 written in mandarin orange segments.

The twelve grapes were for good luck. JDaniel’s swimming instructor used to be a Spanish teacher. She shared with JDaniel that he might want to have twelve grapes to start the new year. He loves grapes. I think he would have eaten twenty if they had been placed in his lunch.

The confetti sprinkles are from various different holiday related sprinkle containers I have. Usually confetti falls at midnight during New Year’s Eve parties. I thought JDaniel would like to see all the fun shapes of confetti mixed in with the yogurt. They also made the plain yogurt taste sweet.

A party hat or New Year’s Eve crown is sometimes worn to New Year’s Eve parties. I neglected to put one into JDaniel’s New Year’s Eve Sensory Bin. There just had to be one in this lunch. He loved the waffle with whipped cream. Once he had finished it, he wanted the scraps left from when I cut the waffle into a hat.

What are some of your New Year’s Traditions?

P. Bear’s New Years Eve Party Learning Activities

December 28, 2012 By Deirdre

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JDaniel and I read P. Bear’s New Year’s party! by Paul Owen Lewis. It declares on the cover that it is a counting book, but I think it is so much more. P.Bear decides to invite his friends to his house for a party. Among his invites is one whale, two horse, and three dairy cows. His guests continue to arrive in numeral order. The last group of guests to arrive is twelve penguins. Each type of animal arrives at the hour that matches the number in their group. Each animal’s page spread in the book includes a clock with the hour hand in red.
The only real colors in the book are red, white, and black. It took only a few arrivals in the book for JDaniel to notice that they were all black and white with red bow ties. It was fun to guess what other black and white animals would appear in the book.

What did we do to explore P. Bear’s New Years Eve Party?

Sequence Quilt

I search the internet to find the animals featured in P. Bear’s New Years Eve Party. I printed out the correct number of each animal from the internet and drew at grid on paper to represent a quilt. JDaniel started with the first patch (square) and glued the correct number of the first animal to appear in the story. He continued across the top row and when he had finished it. JDaniel moved down the the next.I had him count to make sure I had the correct number of each animal. This was a fun counting craft.

Moving Like An Animal Game

The outline of a black house like the one in P. Bear’s New Years Eve Party was cut out and glued to white paper. Then we glued one of each type of animal that visited in a window or doorway.I placed a bowl of sparkly pom poms on the table and JDaniel was asked to toss one onto the house. Then he and I made the animal noise or moved around the kitchen like the animal on whose picture the pom pom landed on. If pom pom didn’t land on an animal, we just tried again.

Great posts that linked up last week:

I really loved the Gingerbread Man Gift Wrap that the Educator’s Spin On It shared.

School Time Snippets did a variety of things with the book Stopping By The Woods On a Snowy Evening. I love the canvas they decorated.I need to apologize. I wasn’t able to visit and promote all the posts that linked up last week. It is on the top of my to do list for this week.How have you explored books this week? Please link up your post. Inlinkz isn’t displaying pictures or links this week. I will be pinning, Facebooking and Google + ing them to make up for this error.

New Year’s Eve Sensory Bin

December 27, 2012 By Deirdre

With New Year’s Eve coming up next week I thought JDaniel would enjoy exploring some of the elements of a New Year’s Eve celebration. A quick visit to our local five and dime and a rummage through cabinets provided a variety of objects for JDaniel to explore.

I filled a turkey roasting pan with some of the following New Year’s Eve sensory bin objects:

paper horns
plastic cups wrapped in sparkly pipe cleaners
streamers
black eyed peas and various beans
red plastic spoon
funny glasses
a tracing tool in the shape of a clock
cookies cutters for the number 1-9

JDaniel had a grand time looking over each element in the New Year’s Eve sensory bin. He sorted through everything to see exactly what was in the bin and how much of each item there was. Then he put in everything, but the glasses back in to play with. JDaniel had too wear the glasses. I knew he would love them.

There isn’t a right or wrong way to explore the New Year’s Eve sensory bin. You can fill cups or horns with beans. You can make all kinds of noises with the horns. You can stretch, throw, or wrap the streamers! The goal is too just have fun.

With this bin I sat with JDaniel and talked over each of the objects and why I had put them in the bin. With some bins I just let JDaniel dig in and play. He has a grand time playing and learning while he works with the various items in the bin.