Summary of our day

Our day was packed with different activities. After completing our normal morning routine of SMART and calendar we got started with our Word Journeys rotations. The kids practice identifying the headers and sorting the words into the correct place. The two other rotations were writing for the final time in their November journal and creating a strand of Christmas lights.

The Christmas lights activity required the students to spell out their name. The wrote one letter on each light bulb. Then on the opposite side of their letter they had to write a word that started with the same letter as their name. The word had to described the holiday season or winter. An example might be for the letter E some kids wrote elves. We had a very large variety of holiday words. It seemed like the kids really enjoyed this activity. They are already hanging brightly in our room. The kids thought it was so cool when they came in from recess and found their lights' hanging on the ceiling! :)

Another holiday activity that we continued to work on today was called "Sharing in Christmas Joy." We divided into groups of 4. Each student had a piece of paper and were told to draw a holiday picture. After a few minutes they passed their picture on to another member of the group. Then that person continued to add details to the picture. We continued this process until all members of the group had a chance to add to each others picture. The students then had time to add more details to their picture and color. Today we did a writing about the picture that their groups created. There are really neat pictures and very creative writings. I can't wait until we finish this project.

During math we continued to work on problem solving. Today our problem was about the Polar Express. The students had to figure out how many seats were on the train if there are two rows and ten seats in each row. It was unbelievable how the students found the answers to this question.

We also found time to start our Holiday Readers Theater! The kids are thrilled to be doing another play. We had done one for Thanksgiving and they LOVED it so I planned another one for Christmas. They do a very nice job with this!