The Week Before Christmas

Christmas Around the World Continues:

We visited the country of Italy.  This is what we learned:

• Old Befana leaves candy for the children and she is still looking for baby Jesus.  CT
• She leaves candy for the children on January 6th. SD
• January 6th is the feast of the three kings.  AM
• Old Befana was mean at first and then she turned nice.  MT
• Old Befana was baking for baby Jesus.  She got tired and took a nap.  When she woke up she was running and running and running to find baby Jesus.  Then she found she was running in the air.  AH
• We read the story "Old Befana" by Tomie dePaoloa.  TB
• St. Francis of Assisi built the first nativity scene. JN

We made crowns to remind us of the celebration on the feast of the three kings.

Bear Hibernation Day

• On the first day of winter we brought in our stuffed animal bears.   CG
• Bears hibernate in winter so we brought in our bears to hibernate.  IM
• We brought in bags to be their caves so they could hibernate in them.  FD
• We made stuff for our bears like a tv, a dog, a baby bottle.  We glued them in the cave.  EM
• We will take the bears out on the first day of spring.  KG

Here are the bears before entering their caves.

Here are the bears after they entered their cave.

We can't wait until spring to see our bears again!

This week we also made beautiful nativity scenes.  The girls worked so well together, helping each other to finish their project.  There was a great spirit of cooperation and generosity throughout the room this week!  Here is one of our Nativity scenes:

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all our blog visitors!

We would love to hear from you!

Christmas Around the World

We have been visiting different countries to see how they celebrate Christmas.  We went to Mexico and this is what we learned.

1. "The Mexican people celebrate 'Las Posadas'. It is when two people dress up as Mary and Joseph and they try to find a place to have Jesus.  There is someone dressed up as a devil, and when Joseph and Mary knock, the devil says 'don't let them in'." - E
 2.  We read 'The Night of Las Posadas by Tomie dePaola. Mrs. L
3.  "We have a Christmas tree decorated with poinsettias." -J
4.  "We read the story of the "Legend of the Poinsettia". Je
5.  "The Legend of the Poinsettia" is a legend that comes from Mexico."- A

Here is our Mexican Christmas tree.  It has poinsettias on it.

In Mexico we also learned about Our Lady of Guadalupe.
1. "She is beautiful."--I
2. " She appeared to Juan Diego."--L
3.  "She gave Juan Diego a sign of herself."--C
4.  "On Juan Diego's tilma there appeared a picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe."--Am
5.  "Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared as an Aztec Indian."  -An
6/  "Mary told Juan Diego to go to the priest and ask him to build a church."--M
7.  "Mary also had Juan Diego put roses in his tilma."--Ce
We made roses and put them around Mary to honor her.

We went to Germany.  We learned about German traditions.
1.  "We learned that they lay their shoes out on December 6th." -C
2.  "St. Nicholas puts treats in their shoes."-Am
3.  "We decorated the German tree with shoes." -K

4.  "We learned that the Germans go door to door singing Christmas carols." --J
Here is our tree from Germany, decorated with shoes!

We visited Canada. When we got to Canada, we fell in love with the caribou.  We found out they were reindeer.

1.  "We learned that reindeer are called caribou in Canada.  They live in Canada."--E
2.  "Canada is cold and near the North Pole.  We think Santa gets his reindeer from Canada." Ce
 3.  "The caribou shed their antlers in the fall and grow them back in the spring."--T
Here is our Canadian tree.  We put caribou on the tree.  We also found a great website where we  watched Santa feed his reindeer at 11:00am!  http://reindeercam.com/

We are going to learn about more Christmas traditions.  Do you have any favorite Christmas traditions?  If so could you write to us and let us know what they are?

Fish and Working Together

We learned about fish in science.  We learned about their different body parts, and their purpose.  Then we worked in  small groups to create a fish poster.  We were each given two parts of the fish to draw, label and define.  The best part of this project was learning to work together.  Listen to what we learned about working together:
 1. "If we work together, we can get done faster."--E
 2.  "We all help each other."--L
 3.  "If we work together we can find new friends."--T
 4.  "When we work together, we learn to be nice to each other."--M
 5.   "We can all help each other to draw parts of the fish."--K
 6.   "If we need help with something, there is someone to help us."--C
 7.   "When we work together we can learn more about each other."A

Here are a few of our fish projects!   You can see that we learned a lot about working together!

Do you work together in your job?  Or on a volunteer committee?   What have you learned about working together? 

The First Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful unit in November that focused on the first Thanksgiving.  First we learned why the Pilgrims journeyed to America.  We learned a lot of facts about the Mayflower.  We created our own Mayflower ships and wrote one of the facts about the ship on the sails.

You can see our ships sailing for America!  We used the Scholastic site to help us learn about the Mayflower.
Then we learned about the hardships the Pilgrims experienced on the Mayflower.  We wrote an opinion piece in the form of the a postcard.   We stated whether or not we enjoyed the voyage on the Mayflower.

Then we learned about the daily life of the Pilgrim and Wampanoag people.  We read books and again used the Scholastic site.  We compared and contrasted their life and culture.  Then we made a Pilgrim home.

We also made a "wetu", a Wampanoag home.

We finished our unit by writing another opinion piece.  We wrote about whether or not we would like to live in the time of the Pilgrims.  We made sure to support our opinion with several good reasons.  The learning experience was a lot of fun!