News for December 23

News for December 23, 2016

This week, the children did a variety of activities leading up to the Winter Holidays.

In math, the students continued to practice writing and telling time and how to use a calendar. The children are required to tell time from both analog and digital clocks and to show time on an analog clock face and write down digital time.

The class discussed nursery rhymes and learned the history of "Mother Goose" and focused on feeling the beat of these poems and recognizing the rhyming words. Did you know that "Mother Goose" is a fictional storyteller invented around 1780 when the poems and songs were first published? (The authors are generally unknown as these traditional English poems were passed on orally through the generations.)

A few weeks ago, I took a photo of each student with a HUGE icosahedron (20-faced geometric figure). This week, we reviewed the type of poems the children learned how to write (rhyming, list, acrostic, shape/concrete and haiku). The students were challenged to write a poem about his/her photograph, using one of the poem styles they learned about. These are now on display in the hall outside of our classroom.

The students learned how to create a sphere-like figure using paper circles. They also learned how to make paper chains. These were used to decorate our class Christmas tree. The children also learned how to make a moving paper sculpture that demonstrated how a plant with a flower grows!

By the end of the week, our class had collected all the Food Bank money donations from other classes. After counting all the bills and coins, the final total was $412.25! As a class, we wrote a letter to the Daily Bread Food Bank to tell them what we did, how much money we raised and our hopes that the money will help people and families who don't have enough money to buy food.

On Wednesday, Ms. Standing visited our classroom to talk about her Hanukkah family traditions. (Ms. Standing was a kindergarten ECE at our school and she is now in teacher's college.) The children listened to her read aloud a Hanukkah story and helped grate potatoes to make potato latkes, a traditional Hanukkah dish served with applesauce. While the latkes were frying, the children learned how to spin a dreidel (top-like toy) and play the dreidel game. In groups, the students played dreidel following the rules linked to the Hebrew letters on the dreidel. Finally, we got to eat the latkes...they were delicious!

The children also learned how to play Chinese Checkers. Did you know that Chinese Checkers are not Chinese (the game was invented in Germany) and not really checkers? The game was invented in 1892 and was given its name in 1928 by a toy company that thought it would sell more games using that name. This is a great game for young children as it is easy to learn and allows for developing personal strategies for winning. (I recommend this as a great board game for families looking to find alternatives to electronic games.)

The class finished learning about and singing the songs in their Holiday Songbooks. There is a lot of history to the songs that we hear around this time of year. Did you know that the oldest song we learned was "The 12 Days of Christmas"? People have been singing that song for over 230 years! The last song we talked about was "Auld Lang Syne" a song traditionally sung on New Year's Eve to remember friends and family and the memories of the past year. Did you know that song was originally a poem, later set to music, by the Scottish poet Robbie Burns?

The children went to the gym twice this week. The first time was to see a play put on by the core French students and the second time was to sing holiday songs. Of course, the students in our class did very well singing since they had studied and practiced most of the songs! It is a tradition at our school to stand up at the end of the sing-a-long and sing and do the actions of the song, "The 12 Days of Christmas". To be with all the primary division students and singing together was a great way to finish off the week before the winter holidays.

Books read aloud this week:

The Velveteen Rabbit by Marjorie Williams (finished)

How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Suess (book and DVD)

My First Mother Goose by Rosemary Wells

I Have a Little Dreidel by Maxie Baum

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (DVD)

The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming - A Christmas Story by Lemony Snicket

Merry Christmas, Squirrels! By Nancy Rose