We love this 3D holiday display from Nienke Krook, teacher and creator of the blog, Red Colander. We found the design in her Flickr photostream and thought it would be a great way to brighten up any early childhood classroom this holiday season!

Gingerbread Houses

Not only does the board offer colorful decoration, it also provides your students with the opportunity to craft some fun and imaginative gingerbread houses. To start, have each student bring in a small recycled box {i.e. cracker box size} and use a marker to plan out windows, the door, and the roof. Have a parent volunteer or classroom helper use scissors or an X-acto craft knife to cut out the box design, then arm your kiddos with construction paper, art tissue paper, stickers, glitter glue pens, scraps of aluminum foil, fabric/felt remnants, and other craft embellishments to decorate their gingerbread houses!

[NOTE: We found a fun way to decorate gingerbread houses using colorful office labels - check it out! And don't forget to take a look at some of the recommended products for this craft!]

Christmas Gingerbread Village

• Background: Create a mountain snowscape - covering the top third of the bulletin board with royal blue background paper and the bottom two-thirds with white bulletin board paper {shaping the top of the white paper with scissors to look like uneven mountain peaks}. Add cotton batting for a fun 3D snowscape, if desired.
• Title: "Season's Greetings!"
• Border: Winter themed trimmer or solid metallic border.
• Decoration: 1) The Gingerbread Houses. Use your students' crafts, stringing strands of white Christmas lights through and between them to create a glowing Christmas village! 2) The Trees. Cut small, medium, and large triangles from different shades of green construction paper, using these to create tiered "evergreen" trees. Decorate the trees with scraps of construction paper in assorted colors, glitter glue pens, stickers, etc. and arrange them around the board. You might also create trees from other shapes - like these circle trees from Parents.com!