Holiday Workshop

Our little elves have been hard at work!!  The Holiday Workshop was a HUGE success thanks to such an amazing group of children and outstanding parent volunteers.  We could not have done this without such a wonderful show of support from our parents who volunteered their time or sent in supplies.  Thank you so much.  We had such a great time.   I had several children ask me why the days had been so short...'cuz we have been busy!!!  The childre worked in 4 different departments each day: ornament making, gift making, gift wrap, and bakery.  It was action packed.  They earned a penny, their wages, for each job completed.  They saved their pennies and are ready to shop!!!  Here are a few highlights! 

 

 

 

I'll snap a few photos of the finished products after tomorrow.  I don't want to ruin any surprises!!  I am thrilled at how all of our projcets turned out.  

 

Holidays around the world part 1

Our trip around the world started this week and I must say I have become addicted to Google Earth!  We applied for our passports and were approved for travel.  Each day we started our trip at Parsley.  Using Google Earth we were able to really get a good picture of our place in the world.  We started out at school, zoomed out to our surrounding neighborhoods, then on to our city, moving out to our state, and then to our country and continent.  As we zoomed out we kept our eye on the pin that represented Parsley.  Once we got our bearings we were off! 

Our journey started in Mexico. We looked around Mexico at the beaches and some of the Mayan ruins.  We read The Legend of the Poinsettia by Tommie dePaola and made the Flor de La Noche Buena  We listened to mariachi music as we wrote about the holidays in Mexico.

Next we travelled to merry ole England.  We had to fly across the Atlantic to get there!  We visited Buckingham palace to say hi to the Queen.  We saw Big Ben and Stonehenge.  We learned that Christmas cards was a tradition that originated in England.  We made cards to send to a nursing home for the residents.  We read that children send letters to Father Christmas by throwing them in the fire and he reads the smoke.

We visited France next on our world tour.  We loved seeing the Eiffel tower! 

Italy was next on our stop.  We read about La Befana, a good witch who delivers gifts to children on Jan. 6th.  We watched a holiday storyteller from Epcot tell the story of La Befana.  You can watch below

Our  final stop for the week was in Germany.  A storyteller (also from Epcot) told us about holiday traditions in Germany.  Did you know that is where the tradition of decorating trees for the holiday began?  We made trees in math by ordering strips of paper from longest to shortest and decorating them. 

Gingerbread Houses

 

 

Here are a few photos of our Gingerbread Houses.  We had so much fun working on these. They turned out so AMAZING!!!  It was so hard not to sample the candy.  These are by far one of my favorite projects each year. 

 

 

 

Gingerbread fun

I have to admit Gingerbread Man week is one of my all time favorites.  I just love the little guy!  We read so many different versions of the story.  We kept a chart all week to compare the characters, refrain, and ending.  Most of the story ended with the Gingerbread character getting tricked and eaten by a sly fox (or coyote).  Only one got away...ask your child to tell you about which one made it out safely. 

We kept a Gingerbread journal to write about the ending of the stories. 

 

 

We wrote about which story we liked the best. 

We wondered why the Gingerbread Man could not cross the river.  What would happen if he did get wet?  We made our predictions and tested them out.  We put a gingerbread cookie in a cup of water and watched and waited.  We noticed that he floated at first, but then he sank and crumbled.  Guess he really didn't have much of a choice but to trust the fox. 

 

We explored items that would sink and float to research what we could use as a floatation device for our gingerbread man.  First we tested lots of items in the room to see if we could determine what makes an item sink/float.  We found that items that were heavy tended to sink, as did any item that could fill up with water.  We noticed that whole crayons would float, but broken crayons would sink.  We used what we learned to decide what building materials we would use to create a boat to get the cookie across the water.  We could use anything in the room.  Some of the items chosen were Legos, foil, cups, and popsicle sticks.  We tested them out by putting a cookie on the boat and floating them across a tub of water. 

 

We decorated Gingerbread cookies and put them in the cafeteria oven to bake/warm.  When we went to pick them up, they had run away!!!  Someone must have opened the oven too soon.  We were so disappointed.  The kids decided to create and post Wanted/Lost posters throughout the school so no one would eat our cookies.  Mrs. Suggs accidentally left her walkie talkie in our room when she came in to give Mrs. Karnes something.  A little while later we heard Mrs. Hamilton calling for her on the walkie.  She had found the gingerbread cookies running wild.  They were chasing them everywhere!! We were so excited and on the edge of our seats waiting to see if she was able to wrangle them all up.  She and Mrs. Suggs showed up a few minutes later with the cookies!  We were over the moon!  We ate them quickly so they could not get away again.  We graphed which part of the cookie we ate first.  The head was the most popular part. 

 

 

 

Here are a few gingerbread man goodies.