Elf on the Shelf and Wants and Needs

We named our Elf 'Buddy'

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During December, we focused on wants and needs.  Here are some pictures of us finding, then sorting, items from various magazines.

Christmas Applesauce Cinnamon Ornaments

One of my favorite activities of the year!!!!

Today, the first day of December, we got to create our own applesauce and cinnamon ornaments.  This is an extremely easy and smelly good recipe.  Just dump a lot of cinnamon and slowly add dollops of applesauce until its the consistency of dough. Flatten it out, cut shapes using cookie cutters, and voila!  We used a straw to make the hole to thread the ribbon through.  Be careful to make these with lots of drying time to spare.  It can take up to a week and a half for the ornaments to dry.  You can use cloves, plastic beads, or glitter pens to decorate them if you choose. 

Here are some pics of the kiddos in manipulation stations.  One of the stations was at my teacher table making the ornaments. 

Shaving Cream Writing

Practicing writing letters, numbers, words, & drawing shapes can get a little boring using only a pencil.  We like to spice it up a bit in Room #10!  Shaving cream, sand, chalk, expo markers, fingers on backs, black legos, & rubber bands on geo boards can all be used for practice.



Thanksgiving!

It's Thanksgiving!

We been very busy with some fun projects this month.  Here are just a few......

Here is a great family project that our Kindergartner's at HBW have been doing for years!  The turkey needs a disguise to hide from the hunter!  See if you can guess who's under that glam!

Precious!  Love these little Indians hands.  To add a bit of math, we sang and recorded 10 Little Indians under the numbered flaps.  Finally we added the correct # of feathers under onto each Indians headdress. 

I just love the answers I get while doing this; really touches my heart. 

This is an example of our Thanksgiving place mat.  We compiled all of our blessings onto one turkey.

This is the first time I tried this, and man did it come out cute! Every student got one to take home and share with his/her family.

All this talk about turkeys really enticed my kiddos to draw their own.

There's never enough time in the day to let them know how much we care.  Taking the time to do this is so important.

Hope everyone has a yummy, blessed Thanksgiving!

Hibernation Day!

Today we had a fantastic time role playing through the hibernation process!  First, we began with our reading story last week, A Bed for Winter.  We created our T chart as we discussed what types of animals hibernate, adapts, and migrate in the winter months.  Next, we read many of Karman Wilson's books, including Bear's New Friend, Bear Feels Scared, and Bear Snores On.  But, one of my favorites is a new book by Michelle Meadows titled Hibernation Station.  Myself and the kiddos loved the illustrations throughout the story. 

Today was finally the day we've been waiting for, we got to go into hibernation!  The students brought multiple animals that we learned about throughout the past week.  First, we had to find food and water before we settled down.  I placed plates of 'hibernation food' around the room.  After being given a baggie, the students had to search the room for food to store up for the winter.  We discussed how some food may be hard to find; we can find it up high in trees (our loft), under stumps (our reading rack), and many other places.  After gathering our food, we took a drink from the stream (our water fountain), and headed out to find a safe place to sleep.  

Where could that food be hiding?

The hunt is on!

Sitting down for our last snack before a long winters nap.

One last sip of water from the stream before we go down. 

It's lullaby time.  We sang Twinkle Twinkle Little Star as we drifted away.

Winter's OVER!  Time to wake up!

Afterwards we disigned our habitats for the winter months, then we wrote a sentence about our animal.

So proud of these little guys and gals!  Another great resource to check out is

Duck at the Door  by Jackie Urbanovic.  It involves a duck staying behind with his new friends instead of migrating.  Very cute!