Holiday Traditions Around the World

During the month of December, we explored how children around the world celebrate winter holidays. 

We used our Promethean Board to virtually travel from place to place around the world. At each stop we received a flag in our passports and documented what we learned about each place.

Our first stop: China 

We learned that in children in China celebrate Christmas by decorating their houses and trees with paper lanterns and paper chains. We decided that we should also decorate our classroom with paper lanterns and chains. We also learned that the Christmas tree in China is called "tree of light". 

We had so much fun working together to create beautiful paper chains.

Our next stop: Mexico

We hopped aboard the plane and traveled to Mexico. We learned that children in Mexico celebrate Navidad (or Christmas) with parades. We learned that the poinsettia is used to decorate for Christmas in Mexico.

We also learned that children in Mexico celebrate Navidad with celebrations. At their celebrations they have pinatas which are filled with candy and treats. We worked with Ms. Fleming's class to bust our very own Elmo pinata!

                                           

                  
  
Next stop: Germany 


We learned that children in Germany believe in a man called St. Nicholas, which is like our Santa Claus. Children in Germany celebrate St. Nicholas Day by placing their shoes outside of their bedroom doors at night. Children that have been good receive fruits, nuts, and candies. But, children that have been naughty receive potatoes in their shoes! On St. Nicholas Day, we put our shoes outside of our classroom door in hopes that St. Nicholas would visit us too! 

Sure enough, St. Nicholas made a stop by room 207! We loved finding little treasures inside each of our shoes. Don't worry, we had no naughty friends this year!

Another German Christmas tradition is the advent calendar. We learned that children in Germany create advent calendars that count down to Christmas day. So, we created our very own advent calendar to count down to Christmas day. Each day, different boys and girls had the opportunity to open the advent calendar and enjoy the treats that were inside.

Finally, we learned that the tradition of bringing an Evergreen tree inside and adorning it with decorations began in Germany. We loved seeing that this German tradition is something that we do in the United States!

Our next stop: Israel 

We learned that children in Israel celebrate the winter holiday called Hanukkah. We learned that Hanukkah holiday lasts for 8 days and nights. Each night, families light a special candle called a menorah. We learned that boys and girls in Israel get to open a present during each of the 8 nights of Hanukkah. During math, we had fun spinning and graphing Hanukkah dreidels. 

Our final stop: United States

We learned that in the United States many families have their very own holiday traditions. We had fun talking about our favorite holiday traditions. We learned that many people in the United States give gifts to share their love during the holidays. We each made gifts to give to our families. 

Before winter break, we had a holiday open house and invited our families into our classroom. We loved sharing our new knowledge about children around the world with our families. It was a wonderful way to celebrate our learning! 

Happy Holidays! 

Friendship Feast

Exploring Pumpkins

Our trip to the Pumpkin Farm led perfectly into our exploration of pumpkins. 

We began our study, by using our senses to explore pumpkins. We sketched the pumpkins we picked from the farm using different materials. We first created a pencil sketch using pencil and coloring it with crayons. Next, we sketched our pumpkins using black ink pens. 

Finally, we sketched and then carefully painted our pumpkins.

We read The Pumpkin Circle by George Levenson.

This non-fiction text taught us about the life cycle of a pumpkin. We learned that the cycle is never ending that starts with a seed and ends with a pumpkin. We synergized (Habit #6) to create a large pumpkin life cycle to share our new learning.

We then began to explore the parts of a pumpkin even further. We labeled the outside of a pumpkin: stem and skin. 

Then, we worked together to explore the inside of a pumpkin: flesh, pulp, and seeds. 

We took all of the seeds outside of the pumpkin and laid them on a tray. Before counting how many seeds were inside of our pumpkin, we each estimated how many seeds we thought were inside of the pumpkin. We counted the seeds in groups of 10 and found out there were 238 total seeds inside of our pumpkin! 

We explored pumpkin seeds by sketching their shapes and labeling our sketch. We also tasted baked pumpkin seeds. The majority of our friends loved the pumpkin seeds! 

Now that the inside of pumpkin has been cleaned out, we decided to carve a face into our pumpkin to create a jack-o-lantern.

We voted which shapes we would like to carve the eyes, nose and mouth. The shapes with the most votes were...

After about a week of enjoying our jack-o-lantern inside, we noticed that some changes were taking place with our jack-o-lantern. We read the book Pumpkin Jack by Will Hubbell. We learned that our jack-o-lantern was decomposing. We learned that a decomposing pumpkin can actually be good for the earth. We drew our observations of the jack-o-lantern before we took it outside and placed it in our garden.

The next day we were surprised to see our jack-o-lantern already decomposing into the earth!

Here is our pumpkin life cycle documentation that is outside of our classroom.

We learned so much through our study on pumpkins and integrated all four content areas into our study: literacy, math, science, and social studies. On our Promethean Board, we worked on a venn diagram comparing apples and pumpkins. We connected our learning and documented several similarities between apples and pumpkins. We had a great time working towards meeting our learning targets and becoming pumpkin experts!