Much apologies for being so late in updating. The holidays were quite the busy time for my family.
The last week of school before break was one of my favorite units, Polar Express week! We started the week by reading the book The Polar Express by Christ Van Allsburg. Then throughout the week we did activities that went along with the book.
On Friday December 20th we had our Christmas party and Polar Express day. Students were able to come to school wearing their pajamas. We started out the morning by making ABC order trains. For math students math train glyphs; coloring the trains based on questions asked. Afterwards they got to open their Christmas presents from me!
Then after lunch students were given their own ticket’s to “ride aboard the Polar Express”, and they came into the library to watch the polar express on the big projector. The outside of the library door shows a train tunnel with the train light shining and railroad tracks below.
Students sat in columns as if they were on a train. They got to have hot chocolate and popcorn! At the end of the movie they each received a tiny bell that came from Santa’s sleigh!
Today begins our last week of school before Christmas break and it also begins our Polar Express week! We started off by reading The Polar Express. We used pictures and illustrations to create a flow map to re-tell the story. Then on their own students put the story back in the correct sequence with a cut and paste activity.
During center time students put together A-Z alphabetical order train puzzles. For math we reviewed 2D shapes and made a train glyph based on answers about trains and The Polar Express. The train activity comes from Simply Kinder.
For the second day of Polar Express week, students made glyphs based on questions about trains and Polar Express.
Then we read the story Christmas Kitten by Vivian French. We talked about how the girl in the story really wanted a kitten for Christmas, and how the boy in The Polar Express got the bell he really wanted as the first gift of Christmas. We then wrote about what we would pick for the first gift of Christmas.
