Gingerbread Houses

With all of the excitement from the holidays, the kids have been talking about making gingerbread houses. Instead of baking the gingerbread, the kids started making them out of boxes and cardboard. We used icing and lots of candy to start creating our houses...............

As the houses are coming together, we are starting to incorporate PATTERNS! For different parts of the houses, we are making patterns out of the candy.

We are using marshmallows to make patterns out of two colors, and once we got the hang of that, we moved up to 3 color patterns!

Preparations for the International Festival

Thank you to all of the parents who brought in information on your family background! We have started looking in our books to find out what our family's flags look like...........

Once we found our flags, we started working hard on recreating them.......

We are also reading books about what types of foods they eat in the different countries. We are making Mexican food, Italian food, Cajun food, Persian food, Indian food, Greek food, and Caribbean food! Yummmm :0)

Here is a sneak peek at some of our flags..............

And some of our food (made out of clay) is almost done! Below you can see a bottle of olive oil from Greece, and a taco! Don't they look good enough to eat??? ;0)

vote, vote, vote

I have great news! Mikayla and Ella have been chosen as final contestants for the costume contest from Kiwi Magazine!

Please, please, please take a couple of seconds out of your time to go on the following site and vote for the girls!

http://www.kiwimagonline.com/contests/diycostumes/voting.php

They are choosing three girls, so please go on the site twice so that you can vote for each one once so that both of them will win!

Yea! We are so excited for them!

Maryam

International Winter Festival

Our International Winter Festival will be held on December 18th, beginning at 3:00 pm.

Ice Express will be there to blow 10,000 pounds of snow in our backyard for the children to play in!

We will also have our "Taste of Food From Around the World"!

Parents, please check your email or be looking by the check in computer for a letter with more details on the festival.


If you have questions please feel free to ask Maryam!

A Letter To Mom and Dad

Well, Thanksgiving is over and we are so excited that the annual "Winter Snow Festival" is near. This year we are planning to have the festival on Friday, December 18th at 3:00.

We will have the snow again, so plan on bringing gloves and snow boots for your child.

Every year we try to incorporate the traditions from as many cultures as we can, being that our school is full of children from so many different ethnic backgrounds. Last year the children started a project on the clothing from each country and wound up making snowmen dressed in clothes from all around the world.

This year it looks like we are hooked on FOOD!!!

We sat down to talk about the festival, and the children were talking about what food they want to bring and where their parents are from. These were some of the comments:

- Trevor said, "I think I am from Mexico, I don't really know where I live!"
- Dimi said, "My dad speaks Greek and English. I am not sure what they eat in Greece. But, when my mom and dad were little kids, I lived in Africa and ate meat from lions.
-Faraz said, " "My mom and dad speak Farsi and English. They eat vegetables and fruit, but my grandma lives far away in Iran."
-Ella said, "My dad is from Mexico, and I think they eat hot dogs there." "Oh! They eat tacos and tortillas!"

We continued to talk and the teachers asked them, "Well since we are not sure what people eat in different countries, what should we do?"

The children wanted to write a letter to the parents. We worked together and this is what the letter says:

Dear Mom and Dad,

Where do you come from and can you please tell me it please? You can please tell me what you eat where you come from? And can you tell me what you do where you come from and where you don't come from, and also from Mexico?

Thank You!

Little Wonders Kids


In other words ;0) The children would like to know more about their family's nationality, what foods are common from those countries, and any traditions your family has during the winter time. And if anyone has additional information on Mexico, they would love to hear about that as well!

I will have a letter to pass out in class so that the children can read it with you at home and they can bring in any information to class.

Let me know if you have quesitons!

From Christmas Trees and Snowflakes to Shapes and Colors

One day Lily wanted to draw a Christmas tree. She started drawing and said, "I can't do it!"

We talked about the shapes we see in a Christmas Tree. We got a new piece of paper and started to draw the shapes we talked about.

And right before our eyes.............Lily made a BEAUTIFUL TREE!!!! One by one, the children started admiring her work. Soon, half of the class was making trees with her. We cut them out and put them on one big piece of paper to make a "Christmas Tree Forest!"

Ella and Natalie wanted to make two "giant" Christmas trees, so they drew them and then wanted to paint them. Only.....we had one little problem! There was no green paint!!!

This was the perfect opportunity for some problem solving! "How can we make green paint?", we asked. The girls started suggesting mixing different colors together. We made charts to record our "tests"........

And in the end, we found out that yellow + blue = green! You can see by our charts that we learned several other color combinations........

So the girls started painting away...








They painted the tree green, and started making plans to decorate the trees. The topic of snowflakes came up, and the children started talking. Some of the kids said they couldn't make snowflakes, so the teachers provided the children with this picture.....

We had the children look at and discuss what they saw. The children said:

• There are lines
• There are spikey things
• I see stars
• There are hexagons

The comment about the hexagon opened up the door for a whole new direction in our project - SHAPES!!!

We showed the children a page full of shapes and we started to name the shapes. We found the hexagon and counted the sides. We started to focus on hexagons, octagons, and pentagons. The children drew the shapes and wrote the numbers on the sides of the shapes. (This was good practice in writing our numbers, we spent extra time writing our numbers if we had trouble with them).

In order to incorporate the shapes in the Christmas Trees, we had the girls make ornaments out of the different shapes...

So far, they have made circles.....

Squares..............
Hexagons..............

and Triangles......

The rest of the children wanted to make snowflakes like the ones in the picture. The teachers gave the children pictures of hexagons, pentagons, and octagons. They counted the sides and then talked about what shape they had. We wrote the numbers on the sides of the shapes. The teachers put the words, "hexagon", "pentagon", and "octagon" in front of the children. We asked them to pick the word of the shape they had. The children said the word, and we talked about what sound we heard first as we said the word. They figured out what letter made the first sound of the word and then were able to choose the correct word to copy on their paper.

Once the children picked the shape of their snowflake, they used popsicle sticks to create them. We are making snowflakes with octagons, hexagons, squares, diamonds, triangles, and pentagons!

We are even getting to use very special paint to decorate our snowflakes! ;0)

Florescent paint is making our snowflakes look "super cool"!!!!!

Stay tuned for more on this project!