The 12 Days of Christmas continues!!!

Last Thursday as we continued to "visit" places all over North Carolina, we learned about the National Gingerbread contest that takes place each year at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, NC.

We learned that people work for months and months preparing their houses. We also learned that each house has to be made completely out of edible, unwrapped materials. We got to look at several different videos that people had taken from the contest and some of those houses were amazing! We also took a little peak at the gingerbread replica of the Biltmore House that is displayed each year in the kitchen. We learned that the Biltmore House is the biggest house in the United States and the children thought the pictures were really neat, especially when they got to see the HUGE Christmas tree that is placed in the dining hall each year.

In honor of the Gingerbread contest, we made our own gingerbread houses on Friday. The kids had a ball.

Everyone got a little sticky!

The houses turned out fantastic! It took a little work to get the houses together, but once they finally got them ready they decorated them with all kinds of candy and they looked amazing! The children had lots of good ideas as to how to decorate and where things should go.

The Twelve Days of Christmas in North Carolina

I received this book as a Christmas gift last year and I have been waiting anxiously to share it with my class this year. It is a phenomenal tour all over North Carolina, highlighting 12 neat and exciting places and things that are unique or special to our own home state. In the story Abby is visiting her cousin for Christmas in North Carolina and sends a letter home to her parents each day describing where they have been.

Each day we are exploring a new part of our state by taking virtual field trips to the different places that are described. So far we have learned about the cardinal and dogwood tree, two of our state symbols, Christmas Town, U.S.A, the Wooly Worm Festival, Grandfather Mountain, Black Bears, and Whitewater Falls. The children have loved getting to read the letters that Abby sends and then going online to look at pictures or watch videos of the different places. After we learn about the place, the children are writing in their very own "12 Days of Christmas in North Carolina" books about what they learned.

This is a neat way for us to experience cool things that our state has to offer, even though we can't physically go visit. It also gives the students information about places that they may be able to go visit one day if they are interested in them.

It is a great way for us to incorporate social studies and language arts into our curriculum.

This book also gives us a look at letter writing, which we will be spending some time on next week as we write our letters to Santa!

This is by far one of the best gifts I have ever received as a teacher! I couldn't ask for a more informative and fun book to share with my class over the holiday season!