{Elves, Gingerbread Men, & Christmas Cheer}

 To get Christmas kicked off in Pre-K, we started by making number sentence Christmas trees. We choose balls and stars, and added them to our tree. Then we added a number sentence below. These were a hit, so we might do more of these in the future!

 Pre-K 1 started getting our Elves hats ready since we talked about Elves. We even had a visit from our own classroom Elf, who we named Thompson!

 

Here's one of our elves.

 And here's a mischievous elf.

 Throughout the week Thompson left us goodies and evidence of his shenanigans. Silly elf! First, he brought us a Pete the Cat Christmas book, which we loved!!

 

One day we found him relaxing in a tub of marshmallows. Oh, Thompson. 

 After all that relaxing, he was well rested and ready to be naughty, so he made a big mess! Our kids weren't too happy about the mess. It was funny!

 After so much elf shenanigans, we got busy making our own elves. Below are some of the most adorable elves ever drawn. For real.

 I want them to pop right off the page!

Pre-K 2 made Santas at art. Someone needed to be in charge of all those elves!

 

  

Pre-K 2 also made a mini reader about Christmas.

 And then they read it together!

 Pre-K 1 worked on making stacking reindeer.

 They ended up looking kind of like otters, but they were still really cute.

 Here they are! Rudolph is on the bottom, as you can see by the red nose.

 I also found this awesome free printable from Freebielicious. If you teach Pre-K-1st grade, you should check out this blog. It's awesome-sauce as my 12 year old would say. ;) Anyways, it was a editable list that I added sight words to and they had to roll and write our sight words. Really cute!

 

Speaking of sight words, we have been doing a LOT of reading, especially predictable text with high frequency words. They love reading books that they know the words or can use pictures to make picture to text connections. We have still been sounding out simple books, too, but I let them choose what to take home, and they generally choose the books that they feel are "easy" which is just fine! I'm happy to see them so excited about reading. :)

 

 In math both classes colored this sweet Christmas light patterning sheet. It's also free if you want a copy, you can find it here.

 Next, up, Gingerbread!!

There was a LOT of gingerbread cuteness going around. Here's just a few:

 

Pre-K 2 worked to make torn gingerbread people at art.

They also worked on a gingerbread math sheet, matching gingerbread boys and numbers.

 

Pre-K 1 did lots of gingerbread table top games. Gingerbread matching...

 Decorating gingerbread houses...

 gingerbread alphabet matching...

 and gingerbread patterning out of an old border set I cut into pieces.

 

In Pre-K 1, Thompson and his gingerbread friend left us everything we needed to make gingerbread cookies!

 So we did! They didn't turn out the way we thought, but not all things go as planned in life, and in Pre-K. We ended up making round cookies and they were still good. :)

 I love this picture of one sweet pea taking the ginger around for everyone to smell. They loved smelling the ginger, cloves, allspice and cinnamon.

 Pre-K 2 actually made gingerbread men! They formed their own men and they were super cute. But, don't you know it, their gingerbread men ran away right out of the oven!

But, they left a string of notes behind!

  

Thankfully, they finally returned to Pre-K 2, but they were soon eaten!

 

 Afterwards, Pre-K 2 did a Gingerbread glyph.

 They turned out really cute, too!

This week we also read some really great books. Here's just a few.

Merry Christmas!

{Halloween} & {Pumpkins}

This is a late post, but better late than never because there are so many adorable things to share with you! For Halloween each year, the ECDC hosts a costume parade and each class makes their costumes at school. This year Pre-K 2 dressed as Smurfs:

Pre-K 1 dressed as scarecrows!

Molly also hosts an annual Pumpkin decorating contest, which is one of my absolute favorite things we do all year. Families bring the most amazing pumpkins and they are displayed all week long.

This year, the Very Hungry Caterpillar Pumpkin won 1st place, the gumball machine won 2nd place and the Nemo won 3rd place. We also had a facebook favorite, which was the salad man. Pre-K 1 & 2 families made some of my absolute favorite pumpkins this year, great work everyone!

 In Pre-K 1 we started our pumpkin week with some optional writing sheets. I LOVE this picture of my boys choosing to work on writing. They earned a Halloween ring for their efforts. Many times its the girls waiting to write, but how sweet are these boys working together?

And they did a FANTASTIC job!

Pre-K 2 carved a pumpkin in class!

They got to feel the ooey gooey inside of the pumpkin.

In Pre-K 1 we made this round pumpkins and filled in blank on the center which says, "A Pumkin is as round as..." They did great thinking outside of the box!

Pre-K 2 made these super cute pumpkin faces. Lots of painting, cutting, gluing going on here.

Pre-K 1 has embarked on a pumpkin project. We discussed what would happen if we filled our pumpkin with soil and allowed it to decompose. We hypothesized about what will happen to the pumpkin over the next few weeks. It's outside right now, and there has been a change! We will be taking pictures monthly to see what changes occur. When the pumpkin gets squishy enough, we are going to set it in a large pot of soil. We plan to keep it through the year!

 We read some great fall books. Here's a few:

Pre-K 2 learned about night time animals that live in trees and then they made these sweet paper bag owls.



We also read lots of books about seasons and discussed how trees change. Then we made fall trees at art. Here's one of Pre-K 2's trees.

In Pre-K 1 we read a book about fall leaves changing colors and why that happens. Then we group painted beautiful fall colors onto large white butcher paper. After it dried, I cut lots and lots of leaves out.  

I had some helpers!

 Next, we cut trunks and branches and glued them to paper. Then we added our painted leaves.

Each tree was well thought out and very unique.

I love how varied and diverse they turned out and watching all these different little minds at work.

Here's one finished product. Cute boy, cute tree! :)

 In Pre-K 2 they worked on making shapes from colored popsicle sticks.

Then they made their own.

Great spacial reasoning and shape recognition peas!

Then, Pre-K 2 made Ice Cream in their class for letter I. Super fun!

They had to shake, shake, shake their bags for a LONG time.

But it was well worth the effort.

That's it for now, we are well into November now and gearing up for Thanksgiving. Happy Monday!