Christmas Break!

Today was the last day of school until the new year.  The kiddos are out for Christmas Break until the 3rd of January.  I think we all are excited about some much needed R&R!

This week in first grade most of the teachers planned fun filled craft days for the students.  A lot of our families do not have many ornaments to decorate their Christmas tree with, so it's nice for the students to be able to make some decorations to use at their home over the holiday.  Crafting with a room full of riled up first graders is not an easy task... needless to say, I am exhausted from all of the festivities.  However, the kiddos created some really cute stuff that I would like to share... so it was worth it :)

The first ornament we made was integrated with a cultural read aloud about the origin of the poinsettia.  I read Tomie de Paola's The Legend of the Poinsettia, which explains how the flower came to be in a Mexican Christmas story.  It was a lovely story and the students really enjoyed learning more about the traditional Christmas symbol.  We created a poinsettia ornament using a coffee filter, red paint, glitter, clothespins, and pipe cleaners.  I think they turned out really beautifully!

Poinsettia Craft 

Last week we read Jan Brett's Gingerbread Baby and Gingerbread Friends in class and compared it to the original Gingerbread Man story.  I promised the kiddos we would get to decorate our own gingerbread babies in class.  As a treat, I brought in gingerbread cookies, icing, and lots of candies.... the students had a blast decorating and eating their gingerbread babies.

A student carefully arranging an assortment of candy on her gingerbread babies. I provided icing, peppermints, chocolate chips, strawberry lace, mini sweet-tarts, and M&Ms.  MMM! 

Gingerbread Cookie Recipe

Here are a few more crafts the students created with the help of an adult... mainly because a hot glue gun was needed to complete the product.

A wreath ornament made with mini muffin tins and a small paper plate.   

Peppermint Ornament Craft
**I altered the methods slightly--- I used hot glue instead of icing and I used beads/sequins/rhinestones instead of red hots (because I could not find any)

Ice Cream Cone Craft
I modified this one as well... just to make it more kid friendly. 

Snowman Popsicle Stick 

As a gift to my students, I made baggies of homemade Hot Cocoa Mix and Homemade Marshmallows.  It took a little bit of prep work, but the kids thought it was so neat that I made my own marshmallows. My assistant and I also created mice ornaments made out of Hershey Kisses to give to the students.  I thought they were very sweet looking.  

Mice Ornaments

I think it is safe to say that I am a bit crafted out at this point.  The kids had a good time and I think they are proud of the neat-o ornaments they created.  I hope that everyone has a peaceful and relaxing Christmas vacation and a wonderful New Year!

Love,
Mrs. Cook

The Countdown to Christmas...

We just concluded our last full week of school before the kiddos get out for Christmas Break.  It's hard to believe we have been in school for 76 days already!  We are approaching the half way point very quickly.  This past week I had the opportunity to read lots of wonderful holiday themed children's books and do some fun activities with my cookies.  We didn't just do crafts though... the students got lots of good holiday spirited writing and math practice.  Next Monday and Tuesday we get to really focus on the crafts :)


The kiddos created their own math problems based around how many different colored ornaments they were going to use to decorate their Christmas tree.  The students would start with a number between 10-20 and then choose two colors they wanted their ornaments to be.  The learners then figured out a possible combination of the two colors so that the total number equaled the first number they chose.  Last, they wrote a number sentence and decorated their tree accordingly.  We have been working hard at composing and decomposing numbers in first grade--- this was a great activity to assess which students understand how to make different combinations of numbers.

It read:  My Christmas tree has 11 ornaments.  It has some yellow ornaments and some purple ornaments.  It has 10 yellow ornaments and 1 purple ornament.  Isn't it beautiful?  10+1=11

This week students also practiced their listening skills when we made Gingerbread Man Glyphs.  We read Jan Brett's Gingerbread Baby and then created our own.  The students listened to different questions and colored each part of their gingerbread man according to how they answered the question.  For example, the boys colored their buttons blue and the girls colored their buttons pink.  This would tell a viewer if the child was a boy or girl.  The poster below explains how someone can find out information about each student by "reading" their gingerbread man.  After we made our glyphs, we practiced graphing data to find out about our classmates based on how the gingerbread men were colored.

Our Gingerbread Man Glyphs displayed in the hallway.

An explanation of our Gingerbread Man Glyphs.

The last neat thing I would like to share from our classroom this week is our Wish Tree.  I had students trace their hands on green construction paper, cut them out, and then write a wish on their hands.  I explained that each hand would make up a part of our class's Wish Tree.  I really enjoyed walking around and listening to the children explain what they wished for.  Some of the wishes were very typical such as, "I wish I could  fly" or "I wish for a million bucks."  Other wishes really tugged at my heartstrings.  I work at a Title I school, which mean that my students that live in a high need area.  One of my students wrote, "I wish my mom would find a job."  That kind of awareness in a 6 year old just makes me so sad.

My class's Wish Tree.  

I started tearing up as I was reading the wishes with my kiddos in class.  It reminds me how important school is to these kiddos... its a place where they can get away from their worries for just a little while, and it's nice to know I can offer that to a child.  No matter how tough it is being a teacher, I know that some of these kids have a pretty tough job too.

Love,
Mrs. Cook

P.S.  Mr. Cook finally came by my classroom to meet my kiddos!  They have heard much about him already and they were "ohh-ing and ahh-ing" all afternoon.  He said "he felt like rockstar" because they all knew his name and were so excited to meet him.  It didn't hurt that he was in uniform--- these kids LOVE that!  :)

Honey Bees and Other Things

Hi There!

I am sorry about such a lapse in my blogs.  The past few weeks have been nuts-o at school!  I will try to catch you up.

Last week to go along with our Scott Foresman Reading Street Story, we studied our unit on honey bees.  The kids studied all about how honey bees make honey and about what goes on inside of a bee hive.  Of course we started the unit by making a KWL chart to set our goals and objectives for the week.

Our honey bee KWL chart.  

The kiddos learned some really neat stuff!  Did you know that honey bees use their saliva and beat their wings to help dry nectar so that it ripens into honey?  We all thought that was really interesting... and a little gross too!  I was very impressed with how well the students were able to understand the honey making process.  We practiced sequencing the order of events by writing about how honey bees make honey.  The kids used words like "first," "next," and "last" in their writing.  

First, the honey bees gather nectar from flowers.  Then, the honey bees take the nectar to their hive.  Last, the honey bees dry the nectar until it ripens into honey. 

One of my favorite parts of the week was reading Patricia Polacco's wonderful story-- The Bee Tree--- to my cookies.  It is a lovely story that teaches a very valuable lesson to the main character, which is that reading-- just like HONEY-- is sweet and rewarding.  Afterwards, the students got to eat biscuits with honey... just like in the story... as a sweet treat.

Comprehension worksheet on story elements from The Bee Tree.  Students were asked to describe the characters, setting, problem, and solution in the book. 

The Bee Tree by Patricia Polacco---- a beautiful children's book that teaches the importance and value of reading. 

Biscuits and Honey! A sweet treat to reward my cookies for being such good students.

 

This week we are reading lots and lots of fun books about Christmas and the holiday season.  I will add another blog very soon to keep everyone updated!  

Love, 

Mrs. Cook