Holidays Around the World

YIPPIE!! It's officially Christmas break! As much as I will miss my sweet little darlings, I will be soaking up the fact that there will not be 5:30 am wake up calls and I can stay up as late as I want :) Did I mention how happy I was??

None the less, this past week was full of excitement as we counted down the days of Christmas and cut a little bit more of Santa's beard off. (countdown to Christmas Day)

My students are now fully aware of the different ways the world celebrates Christmas. Unfortunately, these past two weeks have been incredibly busy and I did not take as many pictures as I wish I would have. I got most of my ideas from Hubbard's Cupboard, a great resource website for teachers.

First Day:

Africa

Kwanzaa- African-American celebration begins Dec. 26 continues for 6 days:

 I read a book called The 7 Days of Kwanzaa and talked about the colors of Kwanzaa, which are green, red and black. Then we made a kinara (candle holder with 7 candles to represent 7 principles: Faith, Unity, Self-determination, Cooperation, Sharing, Purpose, and Creativity) Every day we lit another candle.

Please don't judge my candle making skills ;)

 Second Day:

Holland

Lucky, I had an expert who was born in Holland, Omah (one of my students Grandparents) to come and share all about Christmas in Holland.

In Holland, children put out wooden shoes to await the arrival of St. Nicholas, who comes by ship on December 6. After leaving the ship, St. Nicholas rides a white hourse to children's homes. The children fill their wooden shoes with straw for St. Nicholas' horse. The horse eats the straw and St. Nicholas fills the shoes with treats for the children.

Before rest time, I had the students take off their shoes and when they woke up, there was a candy cane in their shoes :)

 Third Day:

Mexico

Los Posadas- Mexican celebration -9 days preceding La Navidad (Christmas Day).

For each of the nine nights before Christmas, families walk in groups going from door to door, reenacting the search made by Mary and Joseph for shelter in Bethlehem. After going to several houses, the groups arrive at the home where the evening's fiesta, or party, is to be held. Celebrations are usually held outdoors on patios, which are decorated for Christmas with lanterns and pots of poinsettias.

We had own own celebration and did the Mexican Hat Dance. We put a hat (didn't have a sombrero) in the middle of the room and danced around it. Then, I had a parent come in and teach us some Christmas words in Spanish. They did better that I did!

Fourth Day:

Ukraine
This legend is found in both in the Ukraine and in Germany. We read the story, Legend of the Christmas Spider.


To read the story visit this website http://www.reocities.com/Heartland/Valley/8004/christmasroundtheworld.html

We hung tinsel on our Christmas tree to represent to gold and silver web the Christ Child made.

 

Fifth Day: 

Sweden

On December 13 in Sweden, families celebrate St. Lucia's Day. Girls dress in white and wear candle wreaths around their heads. The girls serve breakfast, consisting of Lucia buns, to their parents. "Star boys," who also dress in white and wear pointed caps with stars on them, follow behind the St. Lucia girls.

We made our own Lucia Buns

Ingredients:

Refrigerator biscuit dough

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 cup white sugar

butter or margarine

Unroll and arrange the biscuit dough according to the directions on the package. Help children mix the cinnamon and sugar together. Bake for 3 minutes less than the recommended directions for the package.

Take the biscuits out of the oven and place a pat of butter or margarine on the top of each biscuit. As the butter melts, ask the children to sprinkle the tops of the biscuits with the cinnamon-sugar topping. Return the biscuits to the oven for the remaining three minutes of baking time.

They were VERY yummy :)

Unfortunately, I got so distracted I forgot to take a picture :( You will just have to take my word for it!!

 So that's it! Our Christmas' Around the World! To my surprise, I learned probably just as much as they did. I am always so wrapped up in my own world, I forget what others are doing. So with that, I will leave you this final picture and wish you a VERY Merry Christmas from my Prek Classroom!

It's was Pajama Day if you are wondering why I'm wearing that :)

But I Like it Better in My Tummy!

I'm loving my new bulletin board. It's probably because my kids made it all. The Gingerbread men that we made last week became the border. The candy canes that we made (Thanks to Andrea VanB) were an art craft that we did this week that was SUPER easy.

 

Sorry about the flash. Without the flash though, it was blurry.

 

We painted the candy canes with actual candy canes. Make sure you use the big candy canes that are individually wrapped. They were suppose to stamp them with lines but hey, they are in Pre-k. They still turned out cute.

Unfortunately, when it was time to make the candy canes, I realized I had run out of red paint so we mixed a bunch of colors to get crimson. Word to the Wise, make sure to use red paint only!! When the candy canes dried they had a yellow tint to them. Haha

He's Making a List and Checking it Twice

Christmas time is officially here! My most favorite time of the whole year! I love listening to the Christmas music, decorating the Christmas tree and seeing all the houses lit up with white, green, and red. There is just such happiness and joy in the air. I love to see people being kind and generous to one another. The Christmas spirit is even pouring into my classroom. My kiddos love to sing Christmas music and countdown how many days till Christmas. We have been celebrating the holidays and getting into the Christmas cheer.

This past week at school our theme was The Gingerbread Man :)

Math:

I labeled each Gingerbread Man with a number 1-10 and had the students take turns putting them in order.

 

 After reading the book The Gingerbread Boy, we graphed how many times the characters in the story were mentioned. 

 

I called out a number, and they had to put that number of buttons on The Gingerbread Man

I had the students put The Gingerbread Men in order from smallest to largest and vice versa. Then we did the same thing with blocks.

  First the kids laid by The Gingerbread Man to see if they were taller or shorter. Next, they measured how many Gingerbread Men tall they were.

 

 

Language and Literacy:

We read the story The Gingerbread Man and then acted in out.

 

After making a batch of Gingerbread cookies, we realized that they all ran away! So we had to go on a Gingerbread hunt to find them.

 

Finally we found them! Then we got to decorate them :)

 

and then ATE them!!

 

Science:

Ms. Carla, my assistant, did an experiment with the students. First she poured water on a napkin to see if the water would seep through, then she used a washcloth and lastly a diaper. We talked about absorption. Then we took apart the diaper to see why the water absorbed. They thought this was gross but LOVED every minute of it.

 

 

 

What happens to a bottle of water when you drop a red marker inside? We observed over two days what happened.

 

Small Groups:

We sowed up Gingerbread Men

 

 

Made Gingerbread Ornaments

1 cup of applesauce

1 cup of cinnimon

It's SUPER easy. Just make sure you let it dry for several days.

 

The students decorated Gingerbread Men. I will post later what I did with the finished products!

 

Extra:

After much consideration we decided on the name Ellie :)

 

One of my students touch Ellie the Elf. This is how she reacted....

 

Countdown to Christmas. Everyday we trim a number off of Santa's beard.

 

I will be posting a picture of my bulletin board and what we did with our decorated Gingerbread Men, so stay tuned! 

Thanksgiving Already!?I

I cannot believe that it is already time for thanksgiving! Where has the year gone? Trust me, I'm not complaining. The faster the year flies by, the better. I do love Thanksgiving time though. Stuffing my face full of turkey and cranberries is what makes this holiday so great! I am sad to see that it is overlooked because of Christmas. Thanksgiving is still a week away, and I'm already hearing Christmas music in the stores. My neighbors even have their Christmas lights up!!

Needless to say, Thanksgiving is here and it's time to talk about the Pilgrim's and Indians. I have to say, my kiddos thoroughly enjoyed this unit we did. I can't blame them. We did a lot of fun things!! :) 

Math:

Turkey Bingo:

My students LOVE bingo. I try to incorporate it into several of my themes and they are VERY easy to make. For this bingo, I have pictures with turkeys and numbers on them. For the markers, I had them use popcorn :) Our room smelled very yummy! To make it easier, I have them fill up the whole sheet to win Bingo.

Patterns:
 During small groups I had my students work on shape patterns. I had them glue the shapes on sentence strips after they made the patterns. Depending on group difficulty, they made AB, ABBA and ABC.

  

We also made patterns with Indians and Pilgrams.

Graphing:

I had my students graph what they would rather eat on Thanksgiving day, turkey or ham. You can tell which one they liked better!

 Estimation:

We estimated how many students could fit in our pretend Mayflower :) We were able to fit 15!

  

Language and Literacy:

Turkey Chant:

My students ended up memorizing this chant and have actually been making up other places where the turkeys are. Each student got a turn using a pointer to follow along with the words.

Turkey's Week:

I read the book Cookies Week to the students and then we made our on book called Turkey's Week. The kiddos had fun coming up with "bad" things that the Turkey would do. I wrote the book in front of them, and illustrated it on my own. (Unfortunately, I don't have pictures now but will upload them soon)

Phonological Awareness:

Turkey Rhyme:

We have been working on rhyming words A LOT in my classroom. For this activity, we used a different color everyday. (ex. words that rhyme with cat, we colored red. Words that rhymed with pat, we colored green etc...) At the end of they week, the turkey was nice and colorful!

Art:

This is alot like the spider web that we made during spider week. I had the students draw an Indian symbol using glue and they sprinkled color sand on it. Make sure you use a box so that sand doesn't go everywhere! To have the different colors, the students only drew a little bit of the Indian symbol at a time. I had them make a border around their plate using crayons before using the glue and sand.

Indian Drums:
I cut out strips of orange paper and had the students draw Indian symbols on it. (I did this as an independent small group activity) Then we used coffee cans and glued the paper around it. We played these during music and movement and created patterns with beats. We also had an Indian rain dance and played our drums. The kiddos loved that!

 Indian Hats:

I had to paper bags filled with different words. Bag 1 had different types of animals and bag 2 had adjectives. The students had to draw a word from each bag to create their Indian name (Examples: White Tiger and Swift Fish) I wrote the names on a sentence strip and had the students draw Indian Symbols on their hats and added feathers! They wore them during the Indian Rain Dance too.

 Extras:

We made our very own butter! All you need is heavy whipping cream, a marble, a jar (We used a peanut butter jar) and shake for about 20 minutes!

Our very on Teepee!! We got 4 1X2 at Home Depot and tied them up at the top with rope. Next, we draped some old white sheets over them, paint some Indian Symbols and VOILA, you have a teepee!!

Thanksgiving Countdown:

Super easy to make and the students enjoyed counting down till Thanksgiving!

Yummy Snacks!
After learning about Squanto and how he helped the Pilgrams grow corn, we made our own tasty treat!
All you need is: Oreos, goldfish crackers and candy corn.
Put the Oreos in a plastic bag and have the students crush them and then pour them in a cup. Add the candy corn and sprinkle some goldfish on top and you have yourself a tasty treat!

On of my students parents made these and I thought I would share it with you. They are turkey's made out of pretzels, candycorn, Hershey kisses and an M&Ms! They were very delicious!

Well that's it! Hope you enjoyed my Thanksgiving Unit and got a couple of ideas for your classroom!