This Week in Review - December 3 - 7

December has arrived, and the children are already vibrating with all that the winter holiday season brings. This is a busy time of year, with lots going on at home and at school. Hang tight – we will get through this together! These first weeks of December are traditionally when the first and second graders share many of their, well, traditions. It is a big part of our social studies curriculum – how are we alike and different? Although we may celebrate different holidays, what similarities do they share, and why? What does that tell us about the past?

On Monday, two families came in to share wonderful lovely customs from their cultural backgrounds. Wendy, Jacob’s mom, came with a menorah and talked about how they light a candle each night of Hanukkah. We also learned the dreidel game (and each child got their own dreidel to take home!) Jennifer, Ian’s mom, also shared a few traditions from Germany – lanterns for St. Martin’s Day, putting shoes out on the eve of St. Nikolaus Day, and then lit a candle on their Advent wreath. On Thursday, I shared one of the traditions that we have always loved – making orange pomanders. Just the smell of the cloves and the oranges reminds me of family and home.

Although we have a lot of special things happening, we made sure to fit in our normal routines – special readers (Evan and Finley this week), spelling, memory page writing, our weekly poem, library time, and quiet reading. Children are still very much enjoying our chapter book, Dominic.

In math, we are starting a new project, where we will be becoming “mathemagicians” and putting on a magic show (using math!) This is a fun project, but it does take a lot of math skills – addition (for the trick itself), measurement (to make our costume), and money (for tickets). I’m not sure how long this will all take, but it is sure to be fun. 

In Science, we are learning the parts of a honeybee body. After labeling all the parts, each child then got some clay and carefully made the main parts – the head, thorax, and abdomen. We will add the legs and wings next week. 

In the classroom, we are also learning more about raptors as we carefully sketch the different raptors located at the Leslie Science and Nature Center.

On Friday, in preparation for the big Bake Sale for the Birdies, we made our beautiful birdhouse gourds. These will be just some of the things on sale to support a raptor at Leslie Science and Nature Center.