World travelers, and gingerbread bakers!

We were world travelers this week... exploring different ways of celebrating winter holidays!

We started off the week by traveling to Sweden to celebrate St. Lucia’s Day.  We got our passports, boarded the airplane, and flew to Sweden to learn the history of the day and make our own St. Lucia’s crowns!

 Next we traveled to Mexico with our Book Buddies!  We read with our Buddies, and ate Torta De Roscas, looking for the baby Jesus inside the cake!

We made poinsettia's after listening to the Legend of the Poinsettia by Tomie de Paola, and decorated our Christmas tree for Success Night! 

The kids loved reading with our Kindergarten Grandma, Ms. Carol, by the fireplace! 

We delivered our letters to Santa to the front office to take to the post office!  We are hoping for letters back from Santa or his elves this week! 😉

We were so excited for the Christmas concert!  The kids sang so well, and afterwards we enjoyed touring the school for Success night and a hot cocoa bar!

  

We did a unit this week on comparing gingerbread stories, and learned how to use a venn diagram to compare! 

On Friday we made gingerbread cookies!  Everything was working out great until someone peeked!  They must have jumped out of the oven, because when we went to the kitchen to take them out of the oven, they were gone!!!  We chased them all over the school, following their clues, and finally found them having circle time in our room!  They were reading gingerbread stories!

Counting Down!!!

We began our Christmas Countdown this week!  Your child should have brought home a Santa with cotton balls to glue onto his beard and hat, one for each day until Christmas!  Please help them remember to do this, and let them identify the numbers and count to see which one comes next!

We had fun celebrating a birthday with a very excited 6 year old Max!  Here he is getting a great big birthday hug from the class!

Although Hanukkah isn't until Dec. 22nd this year, I wanted to squeeze in a little celebration as part of our Holidays Around the World Unit.  So we celebrated Hanukkah this week in Kindergarten!  We read a wonderful book by Alaskan author Barbara Brown called Hanukkah in Alaska.  We made menorah's and "lit" the candles with glitter...

... we played dreidel, and sang Hanukkah songs...

... and we made our own passports (I know, I think this is illegal) and flew to Israel to make latkes, which are delicious fried potato pankcakes!

Back in the U.S., we wrote stories about what we would do if we were reindeer.  The kids then presented their story in front of the class to practice public speaking.  

Then we made cute little reindeer from our hands and feet!  They are displayed on the Kinder Art wall by the lunchroom!  Come take a look, there are some very unique little reindeer! :) 

In math we have been having fun playing Which One Doesn't Belong?  We played with coins on Friday, and then used our sense of touch to try to discover which coin was which without looking.  Then we practiced sorting coins. 

Last but not least, Friday afternoon we went to the hockey game to watch our classmates Max and Grayson play in their first home game!  It was super exciting, and they did great!  Way to go guys!!!!