Merry Christmas!

All of our waiting is soon to be done!  Jesus the King is born! Alleluia!

May the blessings of the season be with you and your family!

Original idea found here

Oh what fun, it is to....!

Snowflake found a fun place to hide on Thursday...in a gingerbread house!  She has heard all the stories that we were reading and comparing this month!

Friday morning, she surprised us by showing up in a new outfit.  Doesn't she look cute in her cupcake outfit?  She reminded us all that Jesus' birthday is just around the corner!  We are all excited to celebrate God's gift to the world.

Friday was so much fun!  The students see the crafts as just play, but I learn a great deal as I watch them create.  Can they follow directions, orient the paper, use fine motor skills, wait patiently, take turns and share?  

I think there were five different crafts that went into the bags and the bag itself was also a craft!

My intentions were to take photos all through the different activities, but it just got too busy!  Enjoy the few that I managed to snap!

The bags looked so festive with the snow and the special stickers added!

The little 'light bulbs' are really fingerprints!

So simple, but so effective!

The next three photos are 'borrowed' from the internet because I didn't get a chance to take photos!  I just wanted to give you an idea of what we got to do!

This pom pom ball really challenged them with using the pins and with organizing the pom poms so that there were no empty spaces.

My gift to the children was a cup for hot chocolate that has their name on it.  I remember being disappointed as a child that I could never find my name already printed on pencils or bracelets or any other thing at the store.  With the varied names of the children, I thought they might feel the same!

The directions on the special pens say that the markers will fade or was away if the item is placed in the dishwasher.  These will have to be hand washed in order to last.

Merry Christmas!

Third week of Advent

That Snowflake!  She's such a kidder!  On Monday she tried to disguise herself as Santa...

...and as a reindeer!  It didn't work!  We knew it was her!

She wanted us to get in on the fun, so she brought us larger antlers and a red nose, so that we could dress up too!

Bet you can't guess who this is!

On Tuesday, she turned our paper lanterns into a hot air balloon, so that she could spy on the children from above...

where she could see if they were meant to be on Santa's naughty or nice list.

On Wednesday, she brought a pal back with her from the North Pole.

She and the little guy were making snowmen from the mini oranges that she also brought to school!

Wednesday was a pretty exciting day.  Using a unit shared by the teacher who writes her blog using the title Primary World, the children rolled 3 dice and filled in a graph to see how many of each type of candy they would be adding to their house.  For example, if the three dice were 3, 5, and 2 then the student would have to colour in 10 blocks to show that they would use 10 chocolate chips on their house.  Numeracy is all around us!

The students then filled up a bag with the correct number of candies to add to their houses.

Thanks to the three moms and the grandma who made time in their busy lives to join us, adding some icing to their hair and clothing!  We really appreciated their support as evidenced by the children's happy smiles:

(Idea originally found here: http://www.myclassroomideas.com/tag/religion/)

Just wanted to add a photo of a display in the hallway down the centre of the school.  In this time of unrest in Ukraine, Pakistan and Syria and with the many, many deaths in Africa due to the Ebola virus, the whole world needs the influence of the one born in a lowly stable.

Gingerbread Cookies!

Can you see Snowflake peeking out from behind this reindeer picture?  She's so sneaky as she tries to watch the little ones in Grade Two so that she can report back to Santa!

We asked a question.  What would happen to the Gingerbread Man if he had tried to cross the river by himself?  We made a scientific prediction, which is called a hypothesis.

Just before recess, we put our little gingerbread man into some water.

We would have our answer when we returned.

Oh dear!  The Gingerbread man would not have survived going into the water!

It was amazing to me that all these children who are standing, had never tasted gingerbread.  Something had to be done!  Each one got to decorate a cookie!

It didn't take much, just a little icing and some small M & M's

and the cookies changed into little men.

Was this an opportunity to eat?  Yes, but with a mathematical twist...

because as the boys and girls bit the arm,

or leg or head off, they mapped out the sequence of eating the cookie.

We used that information to collect data, then transferred the data onto a graph to find out that 

in our class, 13 students ate the arm first, 5 ate the head first and 6 ate the leg first!

In small groups, the students played a variety of math games all based on Gingerbread, such as probability

measuring

finding the unknown number in an equation

subtracting

and exploring math addition and subtraction facts.

Lots of learning, all revolving around gingerbread!