Yesterday was our last day before the holiday break and it was very enjoyable! We started out by reading Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Students partnered up and helped each other trace their hand prints and foot prints to make their own Rudolph construction paper cutouts.
Students also made Santa masks and retold the story of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer by acting it out with reindeer cutouts and their masks.
Finally students finished wrapping their gifts to their parents (the ornaments) which they made at the beginning of the week. They also opened their presents given to them by Mr. Bowen. They got star reading sticks and books!
We learned about what is the true meaning of the holidays, that is better to give! We read the story Arthur’s Christmas and then wrote about what we would give Santa for a gift. Finally we made paper snowflakes to give to our family!
We read the story Christmas Cookies and discussed vocabulary such as the word tradition. We also made a list of our Christmas traditions.
Then we wrote Christmas math stories about making gingerbread cookies, then we made Christmas ornaments using tempura paint.
We continued our week, comparing and contrasting Christmas stories to The Polar Express. Students wrote about what they would say to Santa if they were ever to meet him, like in The Polar Express. They also made Santa cut outs.
On Friday we watched The Polar Express movie. Students were given “tickets” to watch the Polar Express and they were “hole punched” just like in the movie. They sat in 2X2 columns just like on a train and enjoyed hot chocolate.
We continued our Polar Express unit and yesterday we read the story Night Tree and we talked about how both of the story were different and the same. The biggest thing we noticed were that in both stories, the characters had hot chocolate.
We then brainstormed describing words about hot chocolate using our senses. We took those words and wrote them on mugs and decorated those mugs with cotton ball “marshmallows”.
This week marks my favorite week, The Polar Express week! On Monday we read the story and students retold the story by putting pictures in the right order. They also shared with the class what happened on their part of the story. Finally they retold the story in correct sequence order by doing a cut and paste activity.
Today students wrote about what they would choose as the first gift of Christmas (A silver bell, pony, and genie bottle). At the end of the day students created a train glyph, answering questions about trains.
We read the story Christmas Kitten and made a connection with the story by talking about what we want for Christmas. We made hand print cut outs and wrote what we want for Christmas on the hand print. We then took the hand print and made them into a Christmas tree. Finally we made a Santa Has sight word book.
We read the story “Gingerbread Boy” and sequenced the story in the correct order of who chased after the Gingerbread boy.
We also watched another version of The Gingerbread Man on the smart board and wrote about things that we would run away from. We also made a gingerbread flip book using describing words.
For math we’ve been learning about shapes and patterns. Students learned how to make shapes and positional patterns, then made their own patterns with candy cane pictures.
We read one of my favorite Christmas stories to kick off our Christmas unit, How the Grinch Stole Christmas. We discussed the problem and solution of the story, created construction paper Grinches and wrote about how we would make the Grinch grin.
