Snow Everywhere!

Let It Snow!

Now that we're well into February, it's past time to get my last January post in! 

We always have so many ways to celebrate and enjoy the winter weather during our January unit focusing on snow.  Here's a bit of what we did this year...

We read Jan Brett's The Mitten and created our own mitten / characters to retell the story. 

Then we created our own version of the story, adding animals to the mitten in our story, until...Oh, no!

"A (an) egle (eagle) is in my mitten."

"A dog is in my mitten."

"A plump pig is in my mitten."

"Oh no!"

We continued with literacy activities by creating a mini-book about colored mittens, which helped us focus on the color words we've been working so hard on lately.

 

Our math skills for this unit focused on measuring and symmetry, so...

We measured mittens using many different non-standards units and then with a ruler.  We discussed why it was so important to have a ruler and use a standard unit of measure rather than anything we wanted!

As for symmetry, we created Jan Brett borders.  Jan Brett's illustrations are so wonderful and the munchkins absolutely love finding the symmetry in each on.  They loved making their own just as much. 

After creating the border, we added a "beginning, middle and end" mitten to the center to retell the story in our own words.  The munchkins did a fantastic job composing their own sentences, using sight words, kinder-spelling and proper punctuation.

And, of course, we had a fun recipe! 

We made mittens using bread and butter and whatever decorations we could find to make them interesting. 

Some of our munchkins even ended up with a perfect pair!

Our mitten unit was a great way to work through winter!

Until next time...

Giggles,

Mrs. D.

The Conversion of St. Paul

Why Are You Persecuting Me?

We spent some time this past week learning about the story of St. Paul being knocked off his horse by the voice of Jesus!  The munchkins listened so intently to the story...almost mesmerized by it.  

Afterwards, we all colored a picture of the event and created a stained glass window to hang in our Atrium.  It was a great opportunity to take a look at some of the stained glass of our own church, too, discussing who and what the images were.

Our projects were done very nicely.  The munchkins colored carefully...

And added the picture to a black window shape.

Then they added beautiful colored shapes to the black border to create the stained glass look.

Pretty!

Did you think I would forget the food?

Never fear!

We made stained glass window cookies.  Chocolate iced sugar cookies with a cross made from skittles.  Extra skittles were added around the cross to create a stained glass look. 

And boy were they good!

St. Paul, Pray for Us!

Until next time...

Giggles,

Mrs. D.

The Feast of the Epiphany

The Happiest Search

Our first week back after a wonderful Christmas break was spent celebrating the manifestation of the Lord with the Feast of the Epiphany.  We prepared for this feast day with all sorts of fun crafts, stories and songs. 

We started with our atrium Infancy Narrative box to tell the story of the three kings.  This led us to a fun art project that introduced two interesting, new concepts:

symmetry and silhouettes

Everyone cut a silhouette of one of the wise men on a camel (which was quite a challenge).  After adding it to black paper, the munchkins used "royal jewels" to create a symmetrical design around the border.  They were beautiful!

Each afternoon of this week we had fun singing the crazy Christmas song The Twelve Days of Christmas.  Even more interesting, though, was to dig deep into the real meaning of the song.  We created an amazing lapbook filled with the hidden meanings of each of the twelve gifts given by the "true love" (after discussing who that True Love is).

The munchkins worked so hard on the lapbook.  There was so much cutting, folding, gluing, coloring and especially...following directions!  It was a huge task and helped develop so many different skills. 

Plus, it was just fantastic when it was completed.  I think every little munchkin commented on how they couldn't wait to show Mom and Dad!

This mini-unit gave us the chance to practice our writing skills too.  The munchkins wrote their own books titled Kings.  The sight word "here" was our main focus, as well as using the special ending "ing".  Considering we had been out of school for two whole weeks, the munchkins did a wonderful job remembering all the conventions of sentence writing.

Here's just a sample.

They were very proud of their finished books...as well they should be.

We ended our week with one last fun project.  The munchkins created the setting and character pieces to retell the story of the visit from the Magi.  

Probably the most fun was the fact that the character pieces were little finger puppets and the setting could stand up on its own!

In all, we had a great first week of January and a great first week on the new year.  

Until next time...

Giggles,
Mrs. D. 

Mitten Mania

Mittens! Mittens!

Our January unit was based on The Mitten, the beautifully rewritten Ukrainian folktale by Jan Brett. We had tons of fun with this winter theme!

We began by doing a storyboard, focusing on the characters of the story, the setting and what happened in the beginning, middle and end.  Afterwards, the munchkins made and used fun story pieces to retell the story with each other.

Which was more fun?

Getting all the characters in?

Or the BIG sneeze when they all flew back out?

After that fun, we decided to create our own version of The Mitten. Each munchkin chose four animals to draw going into his or her mitten.  When it was completed, each munchkin had created 4 great pages of a book written and illustrated entirely on their own!

Here are some of the beautiful pages and fantastic writing!

"A hippopotamus is in the mitten."

"A cat is in the mitten."

"A dog is in the mitten."

"A pig is in the mitten."

"A bear is in the mitten."

"A(n) alligator is in the mitten."

"A fish is in the mitten."

"A fox is in the mitten."

"A wolf is in the mitten."

"A snake is in the mitten."

"A butterfly is in the mitten."

"A mouse is in the mitten."

We continued with some other language activities, focusing on color words.  The munchkins used their great reading skills to decode a little patterned text booklet, coloring the mittens on each page to match the color word in the text.  They also had fun with a quick color word worksheet.  It was a chance to get our markers out too!

The munchkins also enjoyed making a pair of mittens for our back bulletin board.  It was interesting to think about what kinds of things come in pairs and then work on developing proper sentence structure by writing the simple sentence:
I need two mittens for my hands.


This was a fantastic way to work on the double "ee" vowel blend, as well as many of the sight words we know.  It was also a great lesson in adding plural "s" at the end of a word.  Of course, the most fun came after the munchkins wrote the sentence and got to decorate them!

Although this unit was perfect for all sorts of language activities, we didn't want to forget about math!  The munchkins had a chance to...

pattern mittens...

measure mittens...

sort mittens...

and graph mittens!

After we graphed our real mittens in a floor graph, the munchkins worked on transferring the data into a bar graph.

Well done!

Now you know...this can't be all.  Where was the food?

Bread and butter mittens!

(decorated, of course...)



I think that smile says it all!

Keep those mittens on!  It's mighty cold outside!

Until next time...

Giggles,

Mrs. D.