I apologize for not updating sooner. I was at NCCAT for a seminar and then we had a snow day and then all of a sudden we were out of school for Christmas break! It is amazing how quickly that hits each year! It seems like only yesterday I was getting my new little ones for the year and we were just getting to know each other. Now our journey through Kindergarten is halfway over!!
This time of year is my very favorite because there are SO many great books that we can read for the holidays. One that we read, Christmas Magic was really fun. We read about the little girl and her holiday traditions and then we took class time to talk about our own holiday traditions. I really enjoyed sharing and learning the special things that we each do around Christmastime. I learned that many of us have Christmas trees up, some of us have advent calendars, some of us watch Christmas movies, and some of us go visit relatives. I loved hearing all of the stories and really letting the children learn what a "tradition" was and how now matter what you do, it is your family tradition and it is very special. We also learned how people all over the world celebrate Christmas. Would you believe that in Australia Santa surfs up to picnics?!
We learned about the holiday of Kwanzaa and how it involves lots of famly and community. What a great way for us to talk about values and what is important to us and to our families. We learned that people who celebrate Kwanzaa also light a type of candleabra called a Kinara. The children immediately were able to connect and compare this to the Menorah and it helped us to see how holidays can be the same and different all at once!
We also learned about Las Posadas and Mary and Joseph's journey looking for a place to stay so that they could have their baby. To celebrate this holiday, we made our own drama where we dressed up and reenacted this story. In Mexico, children go from house to house for 8 nights where they are turned away. We didn't have 8 nights, so we went from classroom to classroom on the last day of school. They each turned us away, but we were welcomed finally at our Winter Holidays Celebration, our ninth stop!
Our Winter Holidays Celebration was absolutely wonderful! I have to give a huge thank you to all of the parents who made this possible! We were able to experience a little bit from each of the holidays we had been learning so much about. We started out by hearing the story, Jingle Bells and learning about how we all celebrate. Then children got to go to different centers for each holiday. At the Hanukkah centers children were able to play the driedel game and taste latkes and applesauce. At the Kwanzaa center children made mkeke mats and tasted different kinds of fruit. At the Christmas Center children got to make their very own jingle bells and decorate a reindeer cupcake. And finally at the Las Posadas center the children got to make a poinsetta craft and also their very own mini pinata, which is an important symbol of this holiday.
I hope everyone has a very wonderful break and a great time celebrating whatever holiday you celebrate with your friends and family.
Looking forward to seeing the kids in 2011 :)
Friday, December 24, 2010
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Happy Holidays... Part 1
We spent last week learning about Hanukkah. We learned about the history of Hannukah and how the Jewish people weren't allowed to worship God so they had a big war. The Maccabees fought for 3 years, but they won and were able to worship in their temple again. Then, the miracle happened! They had enough oil to light the menorah for 1 night, but it stayed lit for 8 while they could make more oil.
The children loved learning about this and I was really impressed when they reminded me that this sounded like the pilgrims. They explained that the pilgrims also wanted to be able to worship as they chose.
After we learned the history of Hanukkah, we learned about some Hanukkah traditions. We learned that people who celebrate this holiday love to eat latkes and applesauce. Hopefully we will be able to try these at our Holiday Celebration this year.
We also learned about a little game called spin the dreidel. This game showed up in almost every story that we read, so we had to play ourselves! We played with our table groups and each ended up getting a very generous portion of candy!
This unit was not only fun, but it taught us a lot about what people around the world do at this time of year. While we may not celebrate it, it is still important to know about all of the different things out there in our great, big world!
In the next few weeks, we will be learning about several other holidays that are celebrated this time of year. We will learn about Christmas, Los Posados, and Kwanzaa.
We are making a Winter Holidays tree where we make an ornament from each holiday- it looks great! So far we have our Stars of David finished and we are working on Christmas Candy Canes this week. I can't wait to see it when it is finished!
The children loved learning about this and I was really impressed when they reminded me that this sounded like the pilgrims. They explained that the pilgrims also wanted to be able to worship as they chose.
After we learned the history of Hanukkah, we learned about some Hanukkah traditions. We learned that people who celebrate this holiday love to eat latkes and applesauce. Hopefully we will be able to try these at our Holiday Celebration this year.
We also learned about a little game called spin the dreidel. This game showed up in almost every story that we read, so we had to play ourselves! We played with our table groups and each ended up getting a very generous portion of candy!
This unit was not only fun, but it taught us a lot about what people around the world do at this time of year. While we may not celebrate it, it is still important to know about all of the different things out there in our great, big world!
In the next few weeks, we will be learning about several other holidays that are celebrated this time of year. We will learn about Christmas, Los Posados, and Kwanzaa.
We are making a Winter Holidays tree where we make an ornament from each holiday- it looks great! So far we have our Stars of David finished and we are working on Christmas Candy Canes this week. I can't wait to see it when it is finished!
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