Last Day of Holidays Around the World

Boy am I glad we wrapped up our Holidays Around the World unit on Thursday! I was so bummed we didn't have school yesterday but am happy that we finished the most important things.

Our last holiday was Kwanzaa. We learned that Kwanzaa celebrates the harvest and goes from December 26th to January 1st. We made a neclace with noodles that we dyed.

Here is what our bulletin board looked like at the end of our unit!

Coin Jar Celebration

We had our ice cream party to celebrate filling our coin jar. This was a huge hit!

We Are Challenging Ourselves!

We have been really working hard these past few weeks to stretch ourselves and do harder things! We have been doing Venn Diagrams to compare two stories. We don't even need the chart to do this. Every time we read a different version of the gingerbread man we compare it to the original! That is hard! Today we compared The Gingerbread Man and The Gingerbreag Girl with a Venn Diagram.

In math we are working in number sense and really understanding what numbers mean. Our number today was 15 and we built it and broke it down again. We just started introducing equations and we have already picked it up! 

What Are We Learning?

This week we are continuing with the three sight words from last week. But we do have two new word families. In January we will begin learning about long vowels!

We are also continuing accurate counting in math with our counting strategies.

Our new poem is Little Ole Elf. Can your kindergartner show you the motions we came up with?

Christmas in America!

We made it to the United States! We learned about many of the customs we have here to celebrate Christmas. We filled out our passport after our very short flight today :)

Then we made a Rudolf reindeer! This is probably my favorite project we do all year because there is so much personality! Kids traced and cut our their handprints for the antlers and then they made the eyes and glued on a shiny red nose!

Christmas in Sweden!

Today we learned about Christmas in Sweden. We learned about one of their traditions of Santa Lucia. She wears a white dress, a red sash, and a crown of evergreen and candles. The girls got to make a Santa Lucia headband and the boys made their own hats! 

Sight Word Detectives!

It is so exciting to me when kids start noticing their sight words in books! While Dushawn was looking at The Gingerbread Man during word work, he found the word 'said!' 

Library

We almost had all of the books turned in this week at library! That is awesome and means most kids got to check out new books.

Mrs. Polikoff read us two great books!

Then we checked out! We love the library!

What Are We Learning?

Christmas In Italy

Today we learned about Christmas in Italy. We learned about the tradition of La Befana, the Christmas witch who brings the children presents. We wrote in our passports then made La Befana's broom.

Marty

Marty and Thomas had fun decorating his Christmas tree this weekend! Marty even got to help put on the star!

What Are We Learning This Week?

This week we have three sight words and two new word families.

Our poem this week is Gingerbread Man. We are also reading many versions of the Gingerbread Man story and are comparing them.

 

We started our third math unit today. We are focusing on accurate counting using our strategies. 

Christmas in Mexico

Today we traveled to Mexico and learned about their Las Posadas tradition. 

The poinsettia is one of the most iconic things about Christmas and they originated in Mexico! We made our very own poinsettias today in class. This was a fun project! 

They turned out great! Here are just a few.