December is in the Air!

I have been so busy with school as well as having a new toddler running around the house. So I must start off by apologizing for being MIA these past few weeks. And now I am so excited to tell you about all the activities we've been doing in the classroom with the students.

First off, we just concluded our "Colours" theme for the month of November. The children enjoyed making rainbow caterpillars out of construction paper and learning black and white are not colours. We even had a special day called, "Don't Wear Colour to School" day. The students had fun trying to figure out what that actually meant, but they quickly caught on. One parent on the other hand, before leaving the classroom at the door, asked her daughter, "does that mean you come to school naked?" I hope she filled her mother in about our lessons on black and white.
At the end of November to wrap up our "Colours" theme and prepare for the next month's theme, "Christmas Around the World", I did a very simple and neat craft for the students to help me prepare the classroom bulletin board. We each painted white Christmas bulbs brown to make Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer heads with red pompoms glued to the tips of the bulbs for the noses and glued on googly eyes to make his face. We also added brown pipe cleaners for the antlers (wrapped around the gold part of the bulb) and added ribbons so each student could hang their Rudolph on the Christmas tree. And when the reindeers were finished, I cut a large Christmas tree out of green Bristol board and attached it to the bulletin board for us to decorate with our Rudolph ornaments. The students were very excited and had so much fun with this.
In preparation for Christmas, I have been busy going through all the Christmas material boxes and sorting items for the shelves. I found some great things that I know the children will love, such as: Christmas themed erasers for sorting, stamps, Christmas tree decorations to decorate a small tree and Christmas sequencing boards with objects. As the month unfolds I will take pictures of our activities to post on this blog.
I look forward to the next three weeks of learning about "Christmas Around the World", where we will learn songs from other countries, what children in other countries call Santa, what Santo looks like in other countries, and what other holidays are celebrated during December in various places around the world.