We had another busy week here in Kindergarten! We started the week off by presenting the information we have learned about the Chinese New Year to the other classes. The students were really proud of their work and they were excited to share it with others! They are looking forward to sharing their presentations with their families on January 6th.
We traveled to Germany & Israel to learn about how they celebrate the holidays in their country. I only took one picture in Germany but we learned about their Christmas trees, gingerbread and how they celebrate with opening gifts. Ms. Roland's friends also made us gingerbread cookies to enjoy!
In Israel, we learned about Hanukkah, the menorah, and the dreidel game. They sang the dreidel song and gave us gelt (candy coins) to eat.
Our passports were now complete and as you can see we traveled to 5 different countries: France, Mexico, China, Germany and Israel.
We also made our Christmas ornaments as a gift for our parents. The students chose whether they wanted to make a tree or a snowman. They were able to use popsicle sticks or paint chips to make their ornament. We started by painting the popsicle sticks for the snowmen and coloring the ones for the trees. For the snowmen they had to cut a nose, pick eyes, draw a mouth, decorate the hat, and pick a string to hang it with. For the tree, they had to cut the popsicle sticks, color green sticks for the tree and brown for the trunk, glue decorations on, pick a star for the top, and choose a string to hang it up with.
They all turned out so great! They all did a great job. On the back of their ornaments we glued a school picture of that child and wrote 2014. Here are a few of the popsicle tree ornaments.
Here is the friend who chose to make a tree ornament using paint chips.
Here are a few of the popsicle snowmen.
Here is the friend who chose to make a snowman ornament using paint chips.
We attached a little poem and the children chose a color of tissue paper to wrap their ornament in. We hope you enjoyed their ornaments that they created and they will help you and your child remember their time with us in Kindergarten.
Here are some other things that we have done to keep us busy this week! In literacy lab with Mrs. Ball, we read a festive story similar to "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" called "Green Light, Green Light". After reading it, the students colored each page to match what the words said. They enjoyed doing this fun holiday themed activity.
We finished our purple mosaic and earned our black color book as well.
We earned our letter Z, Y, and H books and created our word wall cards. We are getting very close to being finished, we only have a few more left to do.
We finished our book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory so we watched the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. We discussed what was the same between the book and the movie as well as the differences. We also watched the Polar Express and the students enjoyed it as well. It was nice for the students to relax after working so hard and finishing up our Chinese New Year study.
Mrs. Myers class had kindness elves named Elsa and Olaf visit their classroom and gave them ideas on how to be kind each day. One day they wrote the note below that said, "Let's make a gingerbread story to give to another class! They will be so happy! Elsa and Olaf" They delivered it to our class on Friday and I read it aloud to them. They enjoyed listening to the story and were excited to learn that we got to keep the story and it would be added to our library area for them to look at independently.
Left: "to Mrs. Garrabrant's class from Mrs. Myers' and Mrs. Holton's class"
Right: "Our class made a gingerbread girl."
I didn't include all of the pages because there were 18 pages but I included enough so you could see the general story idea. The gingerbread girl runs all over the school.
Left: "We put her in the oven."
Right: "She ran to the office. Ms. Hall chased her."
Until she came back to Mrs. Myers' classroom. See how the story ended below!
Left: "Mingy and Candy distracted her. Mrs. Myers sneeked up...."
Right: "and ate her! That was the end of the gingerbread girl."
Thank you for stopping by! I hope you all have a great break and holiday season. We hope to see you all on Tuesday, January 6th at 2:30pm to share our Chinese New Year presentations with you!
Mrs. Brittany Garrabrant
