Christmas Around the World:
This is a time when we learn about how different countries celebrate Christmas. We learn how they say Merry Christmas in their language, what traditional celebrations they have, what the timeline of their celebrations are, and what are some traditional foods they eat.
This week we "flew" to a couple different countries. Our first stop was in the warm country of Mexico - boy was it nice to wear shorts and t-shirts again ;) We learned about many things including the Posada Celebration, poinsettias, and Kings Day. We also learned that they eat Tamales during this time and it is a family affair to make them. We read the book Too Many Tamales and learned not only about the family tradition of making tamales, but also how a family can forgive when we make mistakes.
Next, we flew to Sweden and had to dig out those winter clothes again. While in Sweden, we learned about St. Lucia Day (which is today) and how if you are the oldest girl in the house, you would rise early on December 13 to serve coffee and saffron buns to your family still in bed. We had a little bit of fun with this - and a few moans from some of the girls :) We also learned about Tomten, the gnome who lives under the floor boards during the year to keep the family safe. He brings out presents for Christmas. We learned about smorgasbords and although some of the foods like swedish meatballs and ham sounded pretty good, pickled herring and cabbage stew weren't so appetizing.
In writing this week we wrapped up our Opinion unit and will be taking a break from writing until after Christmas. Our next unit will be our Informational Unit learning to write How To's. During our writing time this week we will finish our Christmas Around the World. The next countries we will visit are: Italy, Netherlands, and Germany and we will also learn about Hanukkah.
In math we are off to a great start in learning how a two digit number is made up of 10's and extra 1's. We will continue this discussion this upcoming week.
In reading we will be continuing our discussions about characters this week. We are really focusing our thoughts on what are things we can learn about our characters that the book doesn't explicitly tell us. For example: "The character in my book is always doing things for other people so I know that they are a nice and kind person." The students are encouraged to write their thinking down in their reading journals. This week they will have opportunities to sit in the share chair and share their findings with us. Last week, Jada had an opportunity to already share with us some of her great thinking on the characters in her book. Thank you Jada - you did a really great job!
We will be celebrating all the students' hard work on raising money for Calvin to attend school on Tuesday. We will be watching a movie and having DJ's pizza. This will be the last hour of the day and will not be in place of lunch.
Our Christmas Party will be on Friday starting at 2:30. Anyone is welcome to attend :)
Christmas vacation begins December 19 and we will return back to school on January 4.
Lastly, I did not send homework home this weekend because I forgot to run off the copies. I will be sending it home tomorrow, but I know it is a busy week. If you can get it turned in on Friday that would be great!
Thanks!