Christmas Time is Here!

First, you should know that Christmas is my absolute FAVORITE time of year. So the fact that we are losing a day that would have been spent making cute little Christmas crafts because of inclement weather has me a little bummed.  But at least we got off to a festive start! Nearly every center had a Christmas theme.  In the Word Work center, the students pulled presents out of Santa's bag and used foam magnet letters to make the words printed on the presents. 

 In the number work center, they counted the Christmas items on each wedge of the circles and had to clip on the clothespin with the matching number.

The Math Games center had a Christmas tree bingo game where the students rolled two dice, added the amounts together and marked off the sum with an ornament. 

And instead of blocks or trains, the students get to the decorate the classroom tree in the blocks center. This was definitely their favorite center of the week.

The start of December also brought along new Calendar Math.  Each day, once we've discovered the new pattern piece (its an ABCDE pattern this month because I just couldn't hold back from using as many cute Christmas graphics as possible), we count down the days to Christmas.

 The next page allows each child a turn to fill Santa's bag.  Once again, we are working on composing/decomposing teen numbers using a group of ten plus some 'ones' left over.  Instead of a spinner, this month we are using a number generator. A student touches the center of it and it produces a  teen number. Below, Makiah got an 11. She started by pulling in the ten frame (she touches the one on the right side of the page and it duplicates itself) and then she pulled in a single present. While the student is filling the bag, I always give the rest of the students a chance to say how it is made.  I record each number and we compare which number is the highest, the lowest, and if there are any equal numbers.

Next up, it's time to "Deck the Halls with Jack and Coco," and, yes, I do sing that every time.  This page is for practicing several different methods for adding.  We touch the number generators above each character and then I ask the students, "How can we find the sum?" I am looking for them to respond with "use our fingers," "smash the biggest number and count up," and "count the ornaments."  So we do all three methods everyday.  The ornaments in Jack and Coco's hands also duplicate themselves so we place the ornaments on the tree and count them as a way to check our answers after using the first two methods. Once we've solved the addition problem, we place a star beside it. (There is a chart for both classes).

As always, we track our days in school. This month we are using Santa as our marker.  I made one slight change this month. Instead of adding a ones unit each day, I remove all of the base ten blocks, write the number of days in school and then have a student come up and create the number themselves.  This is to teach them what numbers represent, or place value.

Since the students love a little friendly competition between classes, this month we are playing "Race to Santa's Sleigh." They will be playing this in a board game form in the Math Games center next week.

 

 At the end of Calendar Math, if time permits, we touch the number generator and exercise with Santa.  We do an AB or ABC pattern with our exercises.  For example, on Thursday we did jumping jacks, jog in place, and squats all while counting to 61.

During our group writing time, the students learned how to make a list.  We listed the things that  a Christmas tree needs.  Then the students wrote about what their Christmas tree looks like. We made a class list later in the week that told each student's most-desired Christmas present.  These lists will be part of a hallway bulletin board next week.

 Finally, we also began learning about 3D shapes this week. We have been watching this music video by Harry Kindergarten to learn the sphere, cylinder, cube, and cone. I have a kit of real-world 3D shapes that I showed the kids as we sang the song. See if your child can remember any of them. The kids are really enjoying this unit.  Ask your child this weekend to find some of these shapes in your home.

   Next week we will be exploring the 5 senses.  It is, by far, the best week of the year.  We will experiment with a different sense each day -in a Christmas-y way, of course. Your child won't want to miss a day! Have a great weekend and be safe!
       PS: You may have heard about a special visitor in our classroom. Her name is Snowflake and she is our class's scout elf.  The students love to be the first to spot her everyday.