Russian Stars

Today we read Uncle Vova's Tree written by Patricia Polacco.  This is the story of a young girl and her family who visits her Uncle Vladimir and Aunt Svetlana every year to celebrate Christmas in the Russian tradition.  One of their favorite family customs is to decorate the evergreen in the front yard with popcorn and cranberries strings and paper stars.  Then we made our very own paper stars!  Check out the beautiful stars that will soon be coming home for you to display!

St. Nicholas Day!

December 6th is St. Nicholas Day in many European countries. The tradition seems to have begun in the Netherlands and Belgium where boys and girls put shoes out on the windowsill and hope to find goodies and gifts there in the morning. The modern day Santa Claus is derived from this early "Sinterklaas". Making wooden shoes seemed like a daunting task for first graders, so instead they made paper shoes which they set out for Sinterklaas in the hopes that he'd bring these American children a special treat. I left him a special message assuring him that these lovely American children would not ask for treats again next year, but they'd appreciate a little something this one time! When they arrived the morning of the 6th they were somewhat surprised to find clementines and a few candy treats!

Flynn Theater Companion Workshop

We had the pleasure of working with a Flynn Theater residence teacher this week! The plan was to do this work prior to our field trip to see The Teacher of the Black Lagoon, but the Flynn resident teacher was sick. Better late then never and it was a really fun experience! We all participated in the hour-long workshop where creativity was the word of the day. As you'll see in the pictures, the children were asked to express themselves through movement! I love their facial expressions!

Four Winds Science

This week we had our very first experience with Four Winds! This program is brought to our class by parent volunteers and this year we're lucky to have two moms willing to visit each month! Thanks to Heather and Tammy for bringing the first workshop about erosion!

They began with a puppet show designed to teach the class about "agents of erosion"-air, water and gravity. Then we split the class into three groups for the three experiments. Heather had them pump air into a tray filled with beans, seeds and flour to see how even little puffs of air can move the items just like wind moves sand. Tammy had a tray with a little pile of flour and children took turns dropping straws filled with water over the flour to see how water can move and shape the land. My experiment had children shake a plastic jar with rocks and water as hard as they could! The shaking mimicked both gravity and water and their effects on rock. You'll see children looking into the bottom of the jar to see the tiny bits of rock they "broke" off when shaking! Thanks to Heather and Tammy and we look forward to future workshops!

Hanukkah Headbands and Gelt

December is a time for many holidays and celebrations! We will learn about many of these. The first study is of the Jewish holiday, Hanukkah. I read a storybook that explained how the Jews in Syria were told by their King that they must pray to his gods and how a band of farmers fought against the King's army and won! But when they were making their temple holy again, they found only enough oil to burn for one day. The miracle of Hanukkah is that the oil burned for 8 days! That's why Hanukkah lasts for 8 days. After learning about how "bossy" the King of Syria was, they decided it was a lot like the King of England and that Kings are "bossy."

They each made a Hanukkah headband with a menorah on it. I taught them the dreidel game and they each got one piece of gelt...well, it was a chocolate coin, not real gold! Although, some were really hoping for gold!