Gong Hey Fat Choy

Happy Chinese New Year!

Today we celebrated Chinese New Year. Students were introduced to this holiday. Since we are studying schema, we began by activating our schema and shared what we already know about China. We used Sam and the Lucky Money  and Chinese New Year to guide us in our mini-study.

Students also enjoyed a slideshow of how this holiday is celebrated in China and  around the world. This is the year of the dragon. So in celebration of Chinese New Year, we created dragon puppets.

As you can see, we have a group of very creative students.
Wishing you a year of health, wealth, and happiness!

Happy New Year!!

Welcome 2012! I hope that all of you have enjoyed the holidays, break, and celebrating the new year. I have truly enjoyed every moment of the past two weeks with family and friends. But I cannot wait to see my 23 smiling students Tuesday; I have missed them!

December was such a special month in our room and I wanted to share a few photos that I have not posted and post photos of our holiday party. It looks like we did not do any Math this past month! I will have to make an effort to take more photos of our day to day happenings.

Polar Express Day! We had so much fun wearing our PJ's. Click here to read more details.

We learned about Celebrations Around the World...

Grinch Day was a HUGE hit with the kids. We made Grinches and wrote how we would make the Grinch grin...

 

We also participated in a very special Holiday Card Exchange. We made and sent 30 holiday cards to classes around North America. In return, we received 30 cards. We had the opportunity to Skype with a few of the classes.

Here are the cards we created. This student was very excited about the project!

The entire first grade participated. We displayed SOME of the cards in the hallway to show where we received cards. You can read more about the project (and see a better photo) on Mrs. Weiler's blog.



The students also LOVED making gifts for their parents! We hope the parents found them as special as we did. I took photos of the students in their PJ's on Polar Express Day. The students glued the photo onto holiday paper and we created a frame out of cinnamon sticks and ribbon.

Now for the Holiday Party. It was a HUGE success! A special thanks to the parent that organized the event and the parents that helped out at the party.

The students made a special frame out of logs.

 

They made snowman ornaments...

And tree ornaments...

They also played a game.

What fun!

December went by so quickly! It is hard to believe we did all of those special events! I'm looking forward to what is in store this month. We will be learning about matter through a unit on Snow, begin our Data Analysis math unit, and learn about personal narratives. Please check back soon.

Happy New Year!

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.

Diwali

On Thursday, we had a very special treat. One of our students taught us about Diwali. We learned that it is called the "Festival of Lights." We also learned about the symbols of Diwali.