Two weeks worth of posts…Week of December 8 and 15

Well, December flew by… and I got behind on blog posts… So here is a snapshot of what we did the last two weeks of school.

We studied so many countries for our Holidays Around the World unit.  Sweden was one of them.  We learned about St. Lucia.  The girls made crowns and the boys made the cone hats.  Everyone had so much fun and wanted their picture taken.

Jacob had so much fun decorating his cone hat.

Josie loved making her crown with candles.

Look at Cody and all those stars on his hat.

Lillian and Gabby worked hard on their crowns.

Lillian's finished product.

Maddy looks awesome in her crown.

Jakob decorated his hat.

Kernan was happy wearing his hat.

And so was Gio.

Here are my St. Lucia girls.

And here are my boys :)

For our study of Mexico, we made poinsettias with shaving cream, food coloring and glitter.  Our custodian Jason was not too happy with all the glitter...

Some of the finished products.

Yes, our counters looked nice and sparkly when we were done.

Look how cute Maddy was for "fancy" day.

We made holiday wreaths with ripped paper and bows.  Ripping paper is a great fine motor skill as is gluing.  It's still a challenge at this time of the year.  We had glue everywhere!!!!

We had our Artist in Residence on Thursday, December 18.  Mrs. King took us step by step through the process of creating a barn owl.  Our kids were so well behaved and great listeners.  And because we did so well, she took us to the next step which is part of the next session, which was adding color with her special pencils…more on those later.  

Mrs. King discussing the barn owl.

Miri creating her owl.

S. following the step by step directions.

Look how cute Zander's owl is.

Jacob focusing on tracing his owl.

Abigail doing a great job on her owl.

Isn't Cody's owl adorable?

Gabby and her cute owl.

We also had our visit from Food Adventures.   Ms. Clara came in and talked about pears.  Then she let the kids make a parfait with yogurt, granola and pears.  The kids were able to choose what they wanted and how much they wanted in their bowls.  They all LOVED the parfait.  Thank you for the donations. 

We celebrated three birthdays early: Gage, S., and Josie. 

S.'s mom brought in treats on Tuesday and Gage's dad brought in treats on Friday.  

We all sang "Happy Birthday" to the "soon to be" birthday kids.

Yummy treats from Gage's family.  I did not take pics of Sadie's treats, but the kids LOVED them!!!

On Friday, December 19, the kids decorated sugar cookies.  Thank you for all the cookie stuff!  The kids loved everything!  I have your cookie containers and will be returning them to you when we get back.  Thanks to Brandon and Sonja for helping out!

Yum!  Frosting!

Inga was concentrating on decorating her cookie.

Abigail, Kernan and Jack

Jacob, Kolton, and Maddy

Happy kiddos!!  Oh look, there I am.  How'd that happen?

This is an example of a fully decorated cookie to the max…and then I sent the kids home to you!

Week of December 1

Holidays Around the World:
We started Holidays Around the World this week.  We studied England, Germany, Italy and France.  We started out with a "plane ride."  I was the flight attendant and we travelled to the various countries.  The kids loved the "flight!"

We made some stockings for our England craft.

So cute!

Look at the kids focusing on lacing their stockings together.  Wow!  

You can also see Mrs. Hayes in the background helping.  

We cut out and decorated Christmas Trees for our craft for Germany.  

I LOVE the trees.  They are in all different shapes.  So CUTE!

Garrett and Miri stamped with toilet paper roles.

The kids had a blast using glitter to decorate their stars.  

Don't ask me about the mess….I want to forget about it :)  

The important thing is that the kids had fun, which they did.

Writing Journals:
I sent home writing journal #1 (green cover) last week.  The kids received their new journals (yellow cover) this past week.

Gage and Jacob are buddies and had a blast writing in their new writing journals.

Jakob loved his new journal.

Abigail drew a really detailed picture in her new journal.

Gio was pondering what to write about in his new journal.

S. had some great work in her journal.

Evan was very focused.

Samuel was very excited to get a new journal.

Naturalist in Residence:

On Thursday, December 4, we had our Naturalist in Residence session.  We learned all about the watershed and the kids got to practice with a mock watershed.

Map of bodies of water around Mt. View Elem. School.

"What is a watershed?" map.

Children exploring.

More exploration.

Look how engaged the kids are.

Very exciting.  This was before adding houses, logs, trees etc.