Merry and Bright

We have been busy, busy, busy these last two weeks: learning prepositions, studying Christmas around the world, sorting 2D from 3D shapes, and warding off the flu. Hopefully we've been more successful with the former three goals than we were with the last one! 

This week we learned about Christmas traditions we enjoy that come from other countries. Each day, we found a new item: a nutcracker, a poinsettia, and a gingerbread house. We watched a few dances from the Nutcracker ballet and read the story "The Legend of the Poinsettia" by Tomie de Paola.  The students also watched a short video that showed how a gingerbread house is made.

We wrote about each item and where it came from on an anchor chart, reading and rereading it everyday. As a culminating activity on Thursday, I cut the sentences apart and gave each student one word. They had to find the students with words from their same sentence and put them back together. 

 The students also wrote about these items in their special "Christmas Around the World" journals. And on Thursday, they drew and wrote about how their families celebrate Christmas here in the USA. 

The students toured the world of Christmas a bit more during center time this week. In the fine motor center, they used paper confetti to make a poinsettia. 

They reassembled photographs of real nutcrackers, a gingerbread house, and of Santa on the beach in Australia by ordering the numbers at the bottom in a number line.  

In the math games center, the students worked even more with number lines to play the game "Race to the North Pole." They each had three game pieces (Santa, Rudolph, and an elf) that they had to move down the number line. They used the plus and minus cards we've used in other games, such as Turkey Hunt and Pumpkin Patch.  

They made a book of Christmas words in the word work center and labeled a Santa and a reindeer in the writing center. 

We wrapped up the week with our Christmas party where the students had a 2D and 3D shape feast, which they first had to sort. There were some Whoppers (to represent spheres), too - but they were eaten before I got the pictures

They made candy cane ornaments out of tri-beads and pipe cleaners with Mrs. Taylor.

And we played "Count by Tens" gingerbread man bingo in my center. 

The afternoon class had one extra party center: Pin the Heart on the Grinch!

Also of note this week, we celebrated Tacky Christmas Sweater Day.

These girls didn't look tacky- they just looked cute as a button. 

And now for last week........

As I mentioned before, we learned prepositions. I didn't actually use that word with the students. The goal was that they would understand and use them correctly. There was an added bonus of using these as clues when reading new text. We watched this music video everyday upon arrival. 

Then we came up with ways to use these words to describe the items in the Christmas-y living room.

 

The students continued to work on using prepositions in their journal writing. Each day they wrote about their Christmas tree. Where was it? What was on top of their tree? What was beside their tree?

My tree is in my living room.

My tree is in my living room by my garage door.

I have an angel on top of my tree.

A window is beside my Christmas tree.

A cabinet is beside my Christmas tree.

A window is beside my Christmas tree.

My Christmas tree is beside my window.

A tv is beside my tree.

I realize this is journal pic overload but I was SO proud of their work this week - and they were too. The week prior we had really struggled with our journal writing. So I tried a new approach and it  paid off. I hope to see more writing like this when we get back so please encourage them to write over the break. They can even send me a letter! Text me and I'll send you my address. 

In the math realm, we worked a lot with shapes and measurement. We found real-world objects in our own classroom that represented the 3D shapes we were learning about. We went on a few 3D shape hunts to find all the cylinders, spheres, and cubes we could. 

The math games center encouraged a hands-on exploration of 2D and 3D shapes. The students pretended to be Santa's little helpers - answering his mail and filling up his bag.  This game served a dual purpose- practicing addition and discovering the properties of 2D and 3D shapes. 

 They got another hands-on feel for 3D shapes (specifically rectangular prisms) in the GIFT WRAPPING center.  This center was kind of a big deal. 

For the last two weeks, the students have been putting an Elf on the Shelf floor puzzle together. They were a lot better at it this week!

In the word work center, our sounding out skills were put to work. In the "Santa's New Crew" game, the students recruited new reindeer for Santa. They had to first sound out their names, then sort them into their word families. 

 

 Our Fun Friday craft was a paper strip Christmas tree inspired by our unit on measurement (and our own very colorful Christmas tree in the classroom). The kiddos had to order the strips from longest to shortest and then topped it with a star. 

All throughout December, we've been using this new calendar,  This is our first (and last) ABCDE pattern. I just can't whittle down the cute clip-art!  We also kept track of the days left until Christmas. 

On the next page, we tracked the days in school by moving the wreath.

And finally, the students built teen numbers using tens and ones. This activity will lead us into building larger numbers with multiple groups of ten when we get back.

Well- that's it for 2014.  Enjoy your break, stay healthy, and I'll see you in January. Merry Christmas!