Let It Snow

We have been busy learning about snow!  That seems pretty appropriate considering how much actual snow we've had! 

We learned about snowflakes!  We learned that snowflakes have different shapes depending on the temperature of the air but that most snowflakes have six sides.  We also learned that they are made of little crystals of ice. 

We made our own six sided snowflakes using pipe cleaners and beads!

 

 We also made some very special snowflakes!  We decorated snowflakes using water based markers.  Then we sprayed the snowflakes with water.  The colors then spread out and made new colors and designs!  It was really fun to see what happened to the designs we created!

 We also made a snowman!  Not just any snowman... this was a REALLY BIG SNOWMAN!  We voted on what we wanted it to look like.  Then we worked together to make all the parts!

 Then we worked together to make labels for our snowman.  We wrote all the words!  We used some sight words that we already knew and we also learned some new ones!

 

When we were finished, we put him together at the end of the hallway so our friends could see him!  We were pretty proud of him!  We think he looks great!

 We also made some pretend snow... that was pretty cool!  It started out as little dry pieces that looked like salt.  We added water and it puffed up into snow!

 

We also did an experiment!  We wanted to see what would happen to ice.  We put ice in three cups.  In one cup we just had ice.  In another cup we added sugar to the ice.  In another cup we added salt to the ice.  We made predictions about what we thought we would happen.  Then we watched....  And guess what?  The cup with the ice and salt melted first!

We haven't just learned about ice and snow!  We also learned about penguins!  Our math and literacy stations had some fun with penguins and snow, too!

 We did penguin subtraction!  We fed our penguins fish and counted how many were left!

 

We also read and illustrated a book about penguins!  We had to draw the correct number of fish!  This was great practice with teen numbers.  

 

We also used our sight word bottles.  We had to match the bottle to the right word!  Inside the bottles were letter beads and we had to unscramble the words!  

 

We also practiced our sight words in other ways!  We picked "snowballs" out of a bucket that had sight words written on them.  We built the world using letter beads and then wrote them on a paper.  If we had time, we rainbow wrote the words!

 

More sight word practice!  We graphed sight words, too!

We have had lots of fun... but we're ready to move on from snow and warm up a bit! 

Pete says...

Pete has been hanging out in the hallway right outside our room all year!  He reminds us to do our best and "be cool"!  This week he has a special message...

Happy Hanukkah!

Before Winter break, we spent a lot of time learning about holidays around the world! 

We enjoyed visiting other classes and learning about different holidays.  We had our own "passports" and we traveled to Mexico, Germany, France, and China! 

Our class learned about Hanukkah!

We learned about different parts of Hanukkah like the menorah.  She learned about different foods that people eat during Hanukkah like latkes and gelt!  We also learned about the dreidel game!  We learned a song that went with the dreidel game and the sign language motions that go with it. 

We made pictures of the flag of Israel, a menorah, and the different sides of the dreidel to show to our friends.  We worked together to make these by tearing paper and gluing them into the design. 

 Then we got to present everything we learned to all the other classes! 

I am so proud!  The children did a wonderful job!  You can see for yourself...

Great job!!  We are now Hanukkah experts! 

Hope you had a great winter break!  We are excited to back at school and have decided to learn about SNOW for our next study!  Stay tuned...!

Silly Old Santa

This week have been busy working on our Holidays Around the World project! 

We are excited to share with you our project on Hannukah as soon as we finish it! 

We have been getting our room ready for Hannukah AND Christmas!  We each made a Silly Old Santa.  These are displayed at the end of our hallway.  The annual Senior Citizen's Luncheon is next week and we hope our decorations make them smile!

My favorite part of this project is that each person's Santa is unique.  No two are alike because the children are given paper and directions on what to make but they must decide HOW to make it themselves!  I love all the different personalities!

HO!  HO!  HO!

Run, Run! As Fast As You Can!

We have been doing a lot of work with the story of The Gingerbread Man!  The kids LOVE this story and have really gotten into reading all the different versions.

These are just some of the books we have read...

Can you believe how many different stories there are?

The Gingerbread Man is the perfect story for us to use when we are learning about story elements.  We have spent a lot of time talking about the difference characters in each story.  We done some comparing and contrasting as well!  We have also talked about the settings of each story and the plot and main idea!  These are all the concepts that the children will need to be able to identify on their own later in the year!

We also got into some Gingerbread Fun of our own!  We made Gingerbread Boy or Girl glyphs.  We had to answer different questions and the answers determined what kind of nose, cheeks, bow, buttons, etc. we would use to decorate our Gingerbread!  We love looking at these and comparing them with our friends!

We also made some Gingerbread ornaments to hang on our trees at home so we would always remember the story!
 

I bet you're hungry for some Gingerbread now!  I know we sure are!

Thanksgiving

We spent the last few weeks of November learning about the first Thanksgiving.  We were shocked at what life was like on the Mayflower!  We thought they might have eaten pretzels or marshmallows... Boy were we surprised!!

We had a Thanksgiving Feast with Mrs. Smith's class!  They were the Pilgrims and we were the Native Americans.  We presented to each other what we had learned. 

We learned about the Native American's houses, what they wore, and what the kids did for fun.  We learned about Squanto helping the Pilgrims learn to hunt and fish and grow crops.  We also learned about different Native American symbols.  We made signs of these to show Mrs. Smith's class. We worked together to sound out the words!

Now that we are done with them, we have put them into a book!

After our presentation, we had a feast!  Everyone came back to our classroom to eat!  We had made decorations for our tables and placemats for us to use while eating. 

We made costumes to wear for our presentation.  We had headbands and vests that we decorated with Native American symbols.  We also talked about Native American names.  We each picked our own Native American name for the back of our vest!

We had a great time celebrating together!  We hope you had a Happy Thanksgiving!