Happy Holidays!

I hope you all have a WONDERFUL holiday and get to spend some time with your superstar kindergartners! Here is a video of the entire kindergarten singing "Up on the Housetop" at our Holiday Sing-a-Long today. Enjoy!

My Sweet Little Reindeer!

We had lots of fun on Reindeer Day! Students got to make reindeer hats, played "Roll A Reindeer," heard both fictional and information books about reindeer, and we enjoyed watching Rudolph with the other kindergarten classes. Perhaps my favorite project of the day was the reindeer guided drawing that we did. I modeled how to draw a reindeer step-by-step, and then students followed along and then painted their drawings. I love how unique each reindeer turned out!

Reindeer Dance Party!

Holiday Crafts with Big Buddies

We had so much fun working with Mrs. O'Brien's third graders to make a collaborative Christmas tree. Glitter, pompoms and sequins were flying as the children worked in pairs to decorate a triangle. They were then all placed together to form a giant tree!

Holidays Around the World

For the last several weeks, we have been engrossed in our study of holidays around the world. We were lucky to have Globe Trot Scott helping us along the way. Scott, a (fictional) world traveler, sent us a package from a different country almost every day. Inside the package was a pamphlet of information about the country he was visiting and how they celebrate winter holidays there. He also sent books to read aloud to support our learning, as well as a craft to do. We had so much fun and learned so much!

Opening our package from Globe Trot Scott!

In Germany, we read Cobweb Christmas and learned that a tradition there is to decorate gingerbread cookies. 

 
In Sweden, we read Christmas Trolls and learned about St. Lucia Day. We painted Swedish Dala horses with watercolor paints (and Mrs. Johnson forgot to take a picture!)

 In Italy, we learned about La Befana and wrote special notes to place in our parents' dinner napkins.

To learn about Hanukkah, we made latkes (thank you to Chrissy and Aubrey!!!) and played the dreidel game. We also read several great books about Hanukkah.  

 
To learn about the holidays in England, we watched Father Christmas and popped Christmas crackers.

 In Australia, Christmas is during the summertime, and many families spend Christmas day having picnics at the beach and building sand people! So we made one, too!

In Russia, we learned about matroyshka dolls and made one to hang on our tree.

 
To learn about Mexico, we read The Legend of the Poinsettia and made a poinsettia flower out of tissue paper.

Globe Trot Scott taught us about the Chinese New Year and we made our own paper lanterns.

To summarize our unit, we matched pictures and symbols for each holiday to the country that they represented.

I hope your child enjoyed learning about holiday traditions from around the world. I certainly enjoyed hearing about all of your special family traditions and wish you all a wonderful holiday!