Thursday, December 22, 2011

Light Bulb Graphing

Today, the class worked in pairs to complete a graph using a bag of different colored Christmas lights. Each group had a different amount of red, yellow, green, purple and blue lights in the bag. They first sorted the lights into groups of alike colors and then counted each group of lights before graphing on their page.

















































There was an old lady who swallowed a........

We completed a writing activity after we read the story There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bell! Each student finished a sentence in a predictable chart about something winter or Christmas related that they would have included in the story or their favorite part of the story. Below is the predictable chart and pictures of the pages the class completed by cutting, gluing and illustrating their sentences.

































Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Stocking Fun!

Each student had a piece of paper with words inside a rectangle. They cut out their rectangle and threw the rest of the words away. After cutting the words and the stocking out, we played our own version of BINGO. I called out a word and they looked to see if they had it in their pile. By the end, all of the words were called and glued on the stocking. We then added cotton balls to the top of the stocking and decorations when we were finished. Each student then had a turn to read the words on his/her stocking and share their illustrations.

































Christmas Themed Table Names

I was able to get our table names changed before we leave for winter break. The class was very excited to come in and see the new names on top of the tables!
 

























Monday, December 19, 2011

"Deer" Santa

Last week. we wrote letters to Santa and made reindeer. We placed these in the hallway and asked Candy Cane to spray magic dust on them so they would fly with him to the North Pole over the weekend and Santa could read our letters. We were very excited when we returned on Monday morning and saw that the papers were in different spots! We knew then, that Candy Cane took them to see Santa by using his magic dust.













Holiday Tangrams

During our math time today, I introduced holiday tangrams. I first read a story about a man named Tan, who was carrying a special piece of tile and dropped it into 7 pieces. He tried for the rest of his life to put the tile pieces back together. He was never able to put the pieces back together exactly right. While attempting to put the pieces together, he created several wonderful pictures. The class split up into partners and worked together, using only those 7 pieces, to recreate a few of the holiday pictures Tan made.

























Adventure's of Candy Cane Week #2

For our second full week of having Candy Cane in our classroom, he provided us with a lot of fun and tricky hiding spots!



On Monday, he was found chilling out above our ENO board with his legs and arms crossed relaxing while keeping an eye all day long.










On Tuesday, he made a point that we should respect our country and our flag by sitting behind it. We think he was excited to say the Pledge of Allegiance with us that morning.




Wednesday, he was found hiding behind the bow on the door to our classroom. He watched how each student kept in a nice READY line as they entered  and exited the classroom.





On Thursday, we found him head first in the seashells on Mrs. Brown's desk! He's most likely telling us he is ready to go on a beach vacation after the holiday season!



Friday, we found that Candy Cane was playing around when we were not in the classroom. He must have been jumping from number jar to number jar and knocked a few off and then got himself stuck from one of the clips! We could not believe how much of a mess he made, but are hoping it's cleaned up by the time we come back to school on Monday!