What a fun month we had together in December as we prepared for Christmas!
We kicked off the month with learning all about St. Nicholas and his feast day. We learned that years ago St. Nicholas helped poor children and the sick of his village. After St. Nicholas' death one tradition of his feast day was for children to put their shoes outside and St.Nicholas would "visit" and fill them with candy. This tradition slowly evolved to today's tradition of hanging stockings in our homes for Christmas. We decided to put our shoes outside one day at nap time and see if St. Nicholas might drop by and leave us a special treat.
St. Nicholas came!
One of my favorite traditions in the month of December is when Mrs. Dobbins reads The Night Before Christmas to the PreK and Kindergarten classes. It is such a fun time to see the kids interact with our wonderful principal!
All month long we decorated our classroom with beautiful crafts for Christmas. We decorated our tree with snowflakes and manger ornaments that we made.
We water colored ornaments to hang from our ceiling.
We turned ourselves into silly elves!
Our hand prints became adorable reindeer.
We completed a guided drawing of Rudolph, here are a few of the adorable pictures up close!
We put our problem solving skills to use and assembled Christmas trees from different lengths of paper.
We also completed a guided drawing of Santa Claus.
One week we learned all about Gingerbread. We read different stories about gingerbread men, boys, girls, bears, and pirates and even went on a gingerbread hunt around the school!
We finally caught the gingerbread man in our classroom and he left us a yummy treat of gingerbread cookies!
We decorated our own gingerbread kids with the help of our parents and enjoyed sharing with our friends what type of gingerbread kid we made and what type of adventure they would go on.
We also took a ride on the Polar Express! We enjoyed wearing our pjs to school and spent the morning enjoying popcorn and hot cocoa while we watched the Polar Express movie.
We had a special visitor on Polar Express Day, Santa Claus!
All month long we had a special visitor in our classroom, Jingle the elf! He played silly tricks in our room each day and reported back to Santa Claus on our behavior each night. He was such a fun addition to our holiday season!
On our last day of school before break we enjoyed a wonderful Christmas party thanks to our awesome home room moms and all of our parents! Christmas stories, crafts, and yummy treats made for a fun time together!
All month long we enjoyed the count down to Christmas and the excitement of Santa Claus' upcoming visit but we did not forget the real reason we celebrate Christmas-Jesus' birth.
We celebrated the season of Advent each week by learning about how Jesus' birth helped bring Hope, Love, Joy, and Peace to the world.
We took time to give back to others who are less fortunate by packing a Christmas Box for Samaritan's Purse Operation Christmas Child.
We prayed for all of our friends and families and everyone around the world that they would find joy and peace this Christmas through Jesus' promise of eternal life.
Mrs. Straessle and I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas surrounded by those you love! We are so thankful for each and every one of our sweet students and parents and want to thank everyone for the thoughtful teacher gifts and adorable cards.
