Remarkable Reindeer!

We learned facts about real reindeer this week. I know the kids were amazed to learn the remarkable facts. We made Reindeer Facts books, made these cute reindeer antlers, and got to take home some magical reindeer food to leave out on Christmas Eve.

We have spent the week at guided reading time sharing Christmas stories and playing vocabulary games. Today the kids got to pick out a book from me for their Christmas gift and also a candy cane to use as a pointer as they read. The kids received a Christmas card from their pen pals. They have been getting letters from the Emporia State Softball Team and they sent them some really neat cards this week. The ESU team is writing to us as part of their community service hours. My daughter Karley is on the team. They also got to decorate a holiday doorknob hanger. They had a lot of fun fixing these up.

Christmas Around the World

We have been working on Christmas Around the World and learning how we have gotten some of our Christmas traditions from other countries.  We learned that we got the tradition of the Christmas tree from Germany.  These are the cute trees we made using glitter glue and sequins.  We read the story The Little Christmas Tree and the kids shared about getting their trees and decorating them.

 

We know that the kids can’t wait until Santa comes to visit!  We learned that Santa has many different names in other countries.  We learned that Pere Noel is the name used in France. We also learned that children leave their wooden shoes out with hay and carrots in their shoes for Sinterklaus’ horse in the Netherlands.  Other names we learned that Santa has is Father Christmas and St. Nicholas.  Here are the Santa’s that we made to decorate our classroom.

In Hungary we learned that an angel helper brings gifts to good little children.  The tradition says that on Christmas Eve an angel sets up a tree and places the gifts under it.  We made angels and decorated our classroom door.  We are hoping to win a contest for the cutest door in the school and we could win peppermint floats!

 

Kwanzaa is a week-long celebration held in the United States honoring African heritage and culture.  We made a kinara (candle holder)to show the seven candles and customs that they celebrate as each candle is lit. It is observed from December 26 to January 1 each year.  Kwanzaa is considered one of the primary holidays within the United States.

Old Befana is a story about an old lady in Italy that was said to be looking for the Baby King. The belief is that she would slide down the chimney on her broom handle leaving candy and toys for good children in hopes to find the Baby King.

In Sweden the Christmas season begins on December 13 on the feast of St. Lucia.  We made these crowns of candles to celebrate their tradition.

Our tradition is to give gifts to those that we love at Christmas time.  We worked so hard to create these snowman plaques for gifts to give our families.  I hope you enjoy them and know how much love was put into making these.  They were so excited to bring them home and give them to you!  Merry Christmas!!

Compare and Contrast

Here is a look at what we did with the stories the Gingerbread Girl and Gingerbread Boy. They did a great job comparing the two stories and completing the Venn Diagram showing what was alike and what was different in each of the stories. We all thought the story of The Gingerbread Girl was really funny. She was pretty sassy and taught the fox in the story that she was in charge. The boys weren’t too sure that they liked the fact that the Gingerbread Girl outsmarted the fox and the Gingerbread Boy got eaten.

Gingerbread Week!

One of our activities we did this week was work on fact families. We did this power point on our promethean. We worked together and then worked independently and they did a good job seeing how addition and subtraction sentences can relate.

View Full Album

Here is a look at some of our centers this week. We did gingerbread men graphing and adding, used letter tiles that spelled the word GINGERBREAD and made as many words as we could using those letters. Example: read, grin, grab, etc…We also sorted gingerbread men math facts into sums of 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 gingerbread houses. We worked on contractions with ‘s.

We read Gingerbread Fred and talked about nouns, verbs, and adjectives and then did a word sort and wrote sentences using a noun, verb, and adjective. We did this activity together and then next week the kids will do a similar activity at a center.

We played a number line game today called “Race to the Gingerbread House”. They loved this game and were so excited about the huge number line we used on our floor. (I didn’t get pictures because I was busy monitoring the game) We then got to play the game ourselves and the kids brought it home to play with you. We will play this game at a center next week independently.

Using our senses we created a cute book using our senses and the Christmas season. I hope they shared them with you.

I was really excited about their writing today. We sequenced events from the Gingerbread Man and they wrote their own version of the story. They used some great details! They are proud of their books. Todd said, “My mom is going to love seeing that I wrote a whole book!” They loved reading them to me and I loved hearing their expressions and “voice” in their story. I will be grading them and sending them home soon!

They spent so much time on their story writing today that we will have to finish up our gingerbread theme on Monday. We will read the story The Gingerbread Girl and we will do a Venn Diagram to compare The Gingerbread Man and The Gingerbread Girl stories.

Decorate Your Own Gingerbread House

We have read some fun gingerbread stories this week. Here is a link to a website we have on our student computers to decorate your own gingerbread house. Click on the house to go to this site.

Gingerbread Friends

 

View Full Album