December 15-19th 2025 Holidays Around The World!

 

Hello Families,

I am super excited for this coming week and the 2 days next week in room 103! We have completed our unit 1 of Fundations (our phonics program), our module in Into Math and, after a few more lessons, are ahead of the schedule in Wit and Wisdom- so this is a perfect time to "take a break" from the regular schedule and apply what we have been learning in a theme about Holidays Around The World! The students will be practicing phonics skills and doing a LOT of writing as well as participating in theme related math and social studies activities. We will "travel" around the world (got to love Google Earth!) and "visit" the beautiful countries where some of these customs began. I will not post next weekend but will definitely post over the break and show you the pictures from all this fun!

This Monday, the Mystery Box will be bringing us some fun ideas for activities centered on our theme: “holidays around the world”. We will focus on Diwali, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Santa Lucia and the Winter Solstice. We will also participate in many Christmas activities. Although Diwali was already celebrated, it has a common theme among the holidays of which we will be learning. Make sure to ask your child what that theme is at the end of the week! We will celebrate the Chinese New Year in February. Mrs. Harte and I will be co-teaching some of the holidays! Our class will travel to her class to learn about St. Lucia and Kwanzaa and I will teach Hanukkah and Diwali to both classes. 

We will be very busy with making projects that represent each holiday. We will also complete a writing project based on a Gingerbread Friends story and learn a little about the history of the Christmas tree. We will write about each holiday and compile a book about the holidays before the break.

We will have a special “gingerbread friend snack” on Tuesday 12/23- the room parents are organizing this. The students will also be little elves themselves and will be making a special gift for YOU while learning all about these special customs and holidays. As you can see, we have a fun and very busy week +2 days ahead of us!

If there is a holiday during this time that you celebrate that I did not mention, please do reach out to me! I am HAPPY to include more! **If your child is not going to be in school on Tuesday 12/23, could you please let me know ahead of time? I have a little something for each of my students and want to make sure all get their gift:)💝

• Thursday 12/18 is Family Tradition Day! Students are invited to bring in or share a family tradition (this can be a picture of something or your family doing something). Students can just tell a tradition as well (for example: decorating a tree, watching a certain holiday movie, elf on a shelf, making cookies or a gingerbread house with a family member, etc...). 
• We will need some paper towel tubes for an activity 12/19.
• Please send in a regular snack on 12/23 for the morning. We will have our special gingerbread friends snack after lunch.

 

  

HERE ARE SOME PICTURES FROM LAST WEEK:

Making our "world" for our Holidays Around The World Books

If you are looking for a fun engineering game for 
your children, the students LOVE this!

Practicing fine motor skills while cutting ZIG ZAGS!

Practicing coding skills:)

We had some very special guests this week- Locke's grandparents came in and played with us during choice time!

...And here is a photo dump of our 2 visits to the Imagatorium this past week! The students experimented with building with paper and wood and then we tested paper houses to see if they could withstand the "Big Bad Wolf" (the wind tunnel). On Monday, we will design and build wood houses and test those!

TESTING!

December 8-12th 2025

Hello Families!

The class will be going to the Imagatorium 2x this week to begin our STEM lessons based on our Wit and Wisdom story The Three Little Pigs. The students will be constructing houses made with 3 different materials and we will use the wind tunnel as our "Big Bad Wolf" to see which materials can withstand the wind.  I love watching their discoveries!

Thank you so much to Hannah's family for donating the new batch of playdough! We have been using it everyday💖.

Now that winter weather is upon us, there may be the need to bring snow gear to school. As you can imagine, getting a class of 5 and 6 year olds ready for snow play can be quite time consuming. We encourage you to practice with your child at home to maximize her/his playing time outside. HERE is a poster you can use to help your child. Please note that kindergarten has  snow play ONLY on Fridays (of course that is only when there is snow on the ground:). You only need to send in snow gear on Fridays. The other days we will play on the hardtop. In order for your child to be allowed to play in the snow, your child must have:

• winter coat
• gloves or mittens (we do love mittens!)
• snow pants/or snowsuit
• snow boots
• hat/earmuffs  (or at least a hood to cover the head if needed)

If they do not have one of those items, they will have to play on the hardtop on snow play days.

We will begin our new "trimester" special class this Wednesday. We now have P.E on Wednesdays and Fridays for the next 1/3 of the year so please make sure your child has sneakers those days.

This week, the children will...

Language Arts:

• learn the last 2 letters qu, and z
• learn the trick word: and
• practice isolating beginning and ending sounds in words
• complete Fundations unit 1 assessment 
• practice writing all the lower case letters
• build words!
• begin a new "arc" in Wit and Wisdom with the story The Little Red Hen and learn about the elements: characters, setting and story problem

Math:

We will be reviewing math skills this week as well as beginning our number writing math journals, which will be coming home soon.

Science:

• We will be going to the Imagatorium to participate in multiple STEM activities and begin our Wood and Paper unit. Our activities will integrate the story we will be reading in our Wit and Wisdom lessons: The Three Little Pigs
• comparing x-rays of different animals and looking at their skeletal makeup

Social Studies:

We will begin our super fun theme of Holidays around the World at the end of this week- more info on that in the next post.

 

Here are some pictures from last week:

Yarn Art

  

A huge thank you to Mr. Alla for being
our Mystery Reader!

ABC match BINGO

Decorating a Y with Yarn

CHOICE TIME CREATIVITY!

Using hundreds charts to practice our skip counting

Do you hear a /y/ or a /w/ sound first?

Science Center- looking at animal x-rays