You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch

So, I think this is my favorite class photo EVER! I laughed so hard when I was going through the Grinch Day photos. These are our "Grinch" faces. Hahahaha! I think knowing the children makes it so funny. You have the children who could never make a mean face, the ones who really were trying, and the ones who may be actors when they grow up. I love it! Now I wish I would have taken individual photos of Grinch faces.

We came dressed in green to celebrate the day. Except my two precious Cindy Lou Whos.

 Our lessons on Friday were centered about one of my favorite books of all time, How the Grinch Stole Christmas. The children enjoyed completing activities centered around this classic Dr. Seuss character. Check out what we did...

We made words with the letters in "Grinch."

We learned about adjectives.

After our adjective lesson, students did a comparison writing. They wrote about Grinch in the beginning of the story, then what he was like at the end. I will post more photos next week when I post our December wrap-up.

After lunch, we made Grinches and wrote how we would make the Grinch grin.We are not quite done with these.

Then, my favorite activity of the day...Who Knew? Grinch rhyming with Mrs. Rausch's class. We Skyped Mrs. Rausch's class from Mulberry Elementary. They were having Grinch Day too! So, we completed a rhyming activity together.

They were all in green too!

 

We began by matching the first rhyming word.

This student is showing Mrs. Rausch's class the rhyming word match.

A student in Mrs. Rausch's class showed us the word that rhymes with "bow."

 

It was great fun! We hope to do another activity together next month!

We ended the day by watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas with the whole first grade.

"Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before! Maybe Christmas, he thought, Doesn't come from a store. Maybe...Christmas... perhaps means a little bit more!"

Celebrations Around the World

We traveled the world this week. Last week students went to Mexico, Germany, and Australia. This week we went to Sweden, Italy, and England. It was great fun. We made these suitcases to carry all of our activities, our passport, and information. We put flags on the front to show some of the countries we were visiting.

Mr. Holden taught the students about Christmas in Italy. They learned about La Befana.

Students traveled with me to Sweden.We learned about St. Lucia Day that is celebrated Dec. 13th. Here are my Star Boys.

And my St. Lucia girls...

Mrs. Weiler taught the students about Christmas in England. The students made a Christmas card.

We continued to learn about Celebrations around the World with a special presentation on Friday. Two students taught us about Celebrations in Islam. We learned about Ramadan and how it is celebrated. Students learned that during the month of Ramadan, people fast from Sunrise to Sunset. We also learned that a big celebration, Eid-ul-Fitr, marks the end of Ramadan. The children modeled how to say hello in Arabic for us too. The students received a copy of Arabic letters and were fascinated that you read Arabic right to left!

We are going to learn about Hannukah on Monday.

Aloha Friends

We had another very special Skype today. We met our new friends in Honolulu, HI! They are kindergarten students that were eager to see snow...we will have to Skype again when there is snow on the ground.
Before the Skype we checked out their classroom blog, Happy Talk. In addition, we looked up Honolulu on Google Earth. Let's just say we were about to catch the next plane out of Cincy for Honolulu!

Our new friends asked us about what we are learning, our school, and our weather. We asked them similar questions. On their blog, we saw that they worked with the book How the Grinch Stole Christmas. We will be studying this book on our Grinch Day, Friday. They also shared some of their work.

It is a Christmas Tree.


We learned that it is warm all year. They children were all dressed in shorts. They love to swim!

One of our students asked if the children have ever seen a shark in the ocean. Most have seen a shark, but in the local aquarium.

We also learned about Drama. Students at this school have Drama as a Special...how cool!

We cannot wait to catch up with them again soon!

The most exciting week...

 Aren't we cute?! What a special day we shared yesterday. The children were so excited to wear their pajamas to school for Polar Express Day. It was so neat to see the entire first grade dressed in pjs as the Conductor read The Polar Express. We spent the entire day focused on the classic story.

We began by making predictions by listening to some of the words in the story.

Next, the first grade hear the "Conductor" (Mr. Holden) read the story.

Then we worked on the story elements of the story. We not only identified the characters and setting, but worked on the problem and solution. The students also completed a story map to show the events of the story.

Students enjoyed rereading the story.

Now are you ready to board The Polar Express?

The Conductor punches our tickets.

Here are the activities we completed while aboard The Polar Express...

We made Polar Express Pajama Glyphs. Precious!! We will be analyzing the data on Monday. These will be displayed in the hallway along with a writing.

We wrote about the best gift of all...

We made words from the letters in Polar Express. 

We also enjoyed yummy hot chocolate and then we had the biggest surprise...A delivery from the North Pole! (Of course I did not get photos of that!) But you will never guess what was inside...A Silver Bell for each student!! And they were freezing!!!

He's ringing his bell.

The kids had so much fun! However, that is not all we have been up to in our classroom. You can check out the two previous posts about our Skyping sessions.

We finished up our cards for the Holiday Card Exchange. We have been receiving cards all week too. We have a special bulletin board in hallway displaying the cards and showing us the location of the class. I will post a photo this week.

Last Friday, we made Santas and wrote him a letter.

I also forgot to take photos of our Celebrations around the World this week. So stayed tuned...you will see photos of us as we continue our travels next week.

Good Morning Anchorage

This afternoon we had our second Skype session. We got to video chat with a retired teacher.

Here are a few facts we learned about Alaska...

1. During summer months it can be light for 24 hours! They have special "darkening curtains" to help them sleep.

2. Right now the sun sets at 3:30 in the afternoon.

3. Food is expensive. Many hunt their meat. Moose and reindeer sausage are popular foods. Fish is really big as well.

4. Hiking is a popular activity in Alaska, especially during summer months.

Here's another very blurry photo.

We also began receiving our holiday cards from the Holiday Card Exchange. We used Google Earth to compare our community with their community.

 

 This school in Virginia reminded us of our school...minus the very busy road.

 

We found this TX school and community to be interesting. There are very little trees and many, many identical blocks. 

We have two more Skype sessions set up for next week.