Hap-Hap-Hap...Hap Happy Holidays!

What a wonderfully amazing last week of 2015! We were busy preparing our holiday presents for you and traveling to England, Africa, and back to the good ol’ USA.  One of our favorite things was to watch the reindeer LIVE from the North Pole!!!

Visit https://reindeercam.com to see what they are up to!

Have an amazing holiday with your families and friends. See you in 2016!

Our journey continues!

We continued our journey to learn more about the origins of some traditions, symbols, and holidays.  We’ve been “flying” to each country using Google Earth. The kids love it!!! Try it out at home!

We visited Israel where we played dreidel, made menorahs, and colored its map and flag. Special thanks to Mrs. Weisberg for coming in to share about more about Hanukkah!

Playing with the world’s smallest dreidel!

In Greece, we made stockings, completed stocking addition, and sequenced stockings as we counted by 10’s.

Sorting short /i/ and long /i/ pictures

Reading 10 Frames with our magic glasses!

Searching for sight words in our library books!

Holidays Around the World!

As the holiday season approaches, we will be learning about familiar holiday traditions and symbols from countries around the world.  We began our journey to Europe and learned that gingerbread and Christmas trees originated in here, specifically in Germany.

Preparing for take off! 

We read one of our new favorite stories, The Gingerbread Man!  We measured our gingerbread men, retold the story (several times) compared and contrasted different versions, and of course sang a song!



Did you know Christmas trees originated in Germany? Integrating math into our theme, we compared  lengths of paper to create these awesome trees!

Avery compared the lengths of the
strips to create this awesome tree!

Another project we created was a “reindeer peek” picture.  We read (and sang!) Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and then pretended we were Santa’s famous reindeer.  We “peeked” into the window and wrote things we would see around the holidays.

Noah the Reindeer can see an elf and presents!

Jacob the Reindeer can see a dreidel and a candy cane!

We visited Mexico and learned about poinsettias.  As we travel to each country, we are recording what we’re learning in our travel logs!

Sawyer’s beautiful poinsettia!

Eliza recorded what we learned in her travel log!  Great writing!

Everyone is doing a wonderful job with the math homework! They are learning more about reading ten frames and place value! Here are a few math center activities we worked on this week.

Base ten fun!  (Place value in Kindergarten!)

Building numbers using base ten.  1 tower of ten and 5 ones =15!

Learning about the very first Thanksgiving!

Great job on the feathers!
Each was unique and different and made our turkey one-of-a-kind!

This week we learned about the very first Thanksgiving. We now know a fun song, ask us to sing it you at home!  We compared and contrasted our lives with the pilgrims and Native Americans.  The kids were very fascinated with life back then and were feeling pretty thankful for things they have!

Genevieve wrote: I have a bunk bed.
A pilgrim did not!  Great thinking!

Ruben told me he has a BMW and a pilgrim didn’t!

Cami was feeling pretty thankful for her scooter!

Madox was happy to have a comfy couch.
Unfortunately, a pilgrim did not have one!

Abbey’s Native American shield with symbols

They made dream catchers, corn,
and some awesome Native American shields!

Feeling like Fall!

Our weather has finally started to feel like Fall!  We sorted pictures of activities that were either “fall” or “spring”.   We learned about why leaves fall off the trees in Fall and had so much fun recreating a leaf for a beautiful art project.  Aren’t these amazing!? They all made wonderful patterns as borders too!

We also practiced our sight word “is” and reviewed our old sight words as we wrote about scarecrows.  They did a fabulous job listening to the directions as we drew these scarecrows step-by-step.

Ravelle wrote: The scarecrow is pretty. He likes to be happy. (How sweet!)

Claire wrote: The scarecrow is weird. He likes to be scary! (Great job!)

As Thanksgiving approaches, we remember what we are so thankful for. Check out our “thankful” tree next time you are at school.  Such sweet answers!

On Friday, we had so much fun on Music Day! I am so thankful for our wonderful school. We had amazing musicians and the kids learned so much.

Playing percussion instruments from around the world!

Banjo time!

Dancing to different types of music

This is Halloween!

We continued learning about the letter Aa. After sorting words with short /a/ (as in apple) and long a /a/ apron, we practiced reading and writing words with Aa in the middle. (cat, man, etc.)

The students learned about the magic “e” and how he gives all his energy to the vowel to make it say its name (long vowel sound).  Check out the video we watched to learn how to make short /a/ words into long /a/ words!

We ended the month of Halloween fun with skeletons and of course, our Halloween celebration and parade. Thank you to everyone who was able to come help out with the festivities!

Spiders playing chess

Eating our spider cookies!

Trick or treating around the classroom! 

Listening game with Mrs. Trapse

Sorting and graphing “bones”!

Macaroni skeletons! Did you know we have 206 bones?!

More bat art!

And along came a spider!

We focused on spiders this week! We compared ourselves to spiders in a book called, Spiders Have I Have and practiced sight words, phonetic spelling, and informational writing!

Avery wrote: Spiders have 8 legs. Spiders can make webs.

Who knew, The Itsy Bitsy Spider-had so many “the”’s in it!

Cami’s Itsy Bitsy Spider song

Using dice is fun way to practice number recognition and counting! We played Roll-A-Pumpkin and counted and colored as many as we could. Please continue to practice writing numbers at home!

We also met our third grade study buddies from Mrs. Klingerman’s class!  They made us sweet cards so of course we wrote back to them!

Pumpkin, Pumpkin

Its October and we are excited to learn about pumpkins!  Check out some of the activities we’ve done this week!

Noah can see his fat pumpkin!

Claire can see her scared pumpkin!

Madox’s pumpkin life cycle

Jack-o-lantern math!

Fabulous Five Senses

Our sight word this week was: can.  We learned we CAN read! We can read letters, numbers, shapes, places, and pictures!  Thank you for bringing in all of the things your kiddos can read! They were so proud!

Joshua wrote what he can do! He can rock climb and love his mom and dad!

We can read a lot of things!

This week we learned about our five senses!  We made a book These Are A Few of My Favorite Things. We drew pictures of our favorite things to see, hear, touch, smell, and taste.   Here are some of the activities we had fun with!

Jacob likes to touch grass and sand!

Eliza likes to hear birds singing and the radio.

We learned that our body has nerves that send signals to our brains to tell us what  things feel like.

After reading, Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?
We made our own Halloween houses! Arielle hears a ghost “boo-ing” in her ear!