Tracy Porter says," MERRY CHRISTMAS!"

The rivalry continues...

Winter Party

What a blast we had today at our party: making snowman snow measure sticks, decorating cookies, and playing cards. We even had a fun book exchange! MERRY CHRISTMAS kindergartners!

Gingerbread Man Hunt

After reading The Gingerbread Man with our 3rd grade buddies, we were going to eat our gingerbread cookies. But when we went to find the cookies, they ran away. Our class went on a hunt for them around the school. We looked everywhere...some teachers said that they ran through their rooms. Others had not seen them. Mr. Garbart said that if he saw them he would eat them all up...so we needed to find them before he did! One teacher said that one ran in her room and ate half her donut! We finally followed the crumb trail to our third grade buddies class. They trapped them for us. We all decided to eat their legs first so they would not run away again. As we were finishing one child exclaimed, "Ms. Baker...that ladies donut is in my gingerbread girl's belly!" Thanks Kyla for making such wonderful (yet sneaky) cookies for our class!

Gingerbread Houses

What a wonderful time of year this is! One Friday for cooking club, a few moms and one dad got together and helped our class make gingerbread houses. We had candied lawns, gardens, entryways, windows, doors, Christmas trees and even snowmen. It was a great project and everyone had a blast (especially those kids who kept sneaking candy in their mouths!!)

Christmas Tree Lighting

This weekend our class participated in the Frederick Tree Lighting Ceremony. For the past couple of weeks we have been working on making snowflake ornaments which we brought last night and hung on the big Christmas trees. It was so fun to meet up as a class outside of school but it was SO COLD (and all the kids know that I don't like to be cold!) After we hung our ornaments we all dispersed to either get a picture with Santa, eat some cookies, pet the live reindeers, or go on a horse drawn carriage ride. It was so fun to bump into each other as we all walked around the park. Thank you so much to everyone who showed up for this despite the freezing temperatures!

Snow White

Last week we read the story Snow White which is my favorite Core Knowledge story to read (the queen is a bit silly!) We then used our 5 senses to talk about an apple...the kids were a bit concerned that they may have been the poisoned apples from the story! Now we are writing our own version of Snow White. We have Snow White and the Seven SAINTS Fans, Snow White and the Seven Broncos Fans, Snow White and the Seven Little Baby Brothers, Snow White and the Seven Monsters, Snow White and the Seven Aliens, and many more. Everyone is doing such a great job writing their own story!

What a wonderful Thanksgiving feast we had! To celebrate all that we have learned about the Pilgrims, Native Americans, and the first Thanksgiving, we had a feast and invited our families. We packed lots of people into our classroom (just like people were packed onto the Mayflower), moved away all of our desks, brought in lots of food, and had a giant feast. We ate on the ground just like they did at the first Thanksgiving feast and shared our food with friends and family. We used our place mats that we wove together and wore our Pilgrim collars or Native American headbands. We even got to do a craft and write what we were thankful on turkey feathers. It was a wonderful day that we have been looking forward to all week!

**My camera has not been working so swell so most of my pictures came out blurry...sorry!

Butter

This week we have been learning about the Pilgrims and Native Americans. We learned that life was hard for the Pilgrims: they were in an unfamiliar part of the world, they left everything behind, they had a rough boat ride over, and the kids had to do lots and lots of chores! One of the chores that kids had to help with was to make butter. So, in the afternoon one day, we made our own butter. We put cream in a jar with a penny (so the fats could hit up against something and start clumping together) and shook it for almost 20 minutes (we were exhausted after all that shaking.) Luckily we got to then eat our butter...which formed nicely...on crackers. And it was really good!

Oceans

Last week we learned about the 4 oceans: Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean, Indian Ocean, and the Arctic Ocean. We read stories about all the sea creatures as well. We really loved the story of Rainbow Fish who gave away his shiny scales to his friends. So, we made our own Rainbow Fish! The kids in the afternoon also decided that they wanted our class to be an ocean so we hung sea creatures from the ceiling. We also decided that each day we came to class we needed to bring gills so that we could breathe in our class ocean. We appointed a decision make to say which ocean our class was, and much to my dismay...it is the very cold Arctic Ocean!

Happy Veteran's Day!

Stone Soup

After going to Miller Farms, we read a book about 2 soldiers who went into a town and needed something to eat and a place to stay. No one wanted to help them so they came up with a plan to make Stone Soup in order to teach the villagers how to share. In the end, everyone had yummy soup to eat! We all shared our veggies from the farm and made our own Stone Soup. We invited our principals, office staff, and specials teachers and they all loved it. We ended up making 4 pots of soup because it was a big hit with our class too. Once kid ate 5 sups full! Who knew vegetables could be so yummy!