La Leyenda de La Flor de Nochebuena / The Legend of the Poinsettia

   I hate how time has gotten away from me once again! This year has been by far, the fastest that a school year has gone...I cannot believe that it is already December 13th!
   This past week, we started a Holidays Around The World mini unit. In the primary classroom, the children learned all about Hanukkah, made a Menorah, learned how to play Driedel and we even had applesauce and latkes for snack on Friday!

Menorah

 Driedel

Applesauce & Latkes

   In Spanish class, I have begun to teach the children how Christmas is celebrated in Mexico. Growing up, I remember the traditions that my family had and some mirrored the traditions I read in the books that I chose to read to the children. So it was kind of nice to go down memory lane and remember the good ole days! This past week we read the book "The Legend Of The Poinsettia" by Tomie dePaulo. It is quite a detailed story so I had to paraphrase and summarize, but I made sure to highlight the main idea...that being that the legend was that the Poinsettia first bloomed on Christmas Eve and is now known as the Flower of the Holy Night or La Flor de Nochebuena.

   A simple craft followed as they each made their own poinsettia. Some wanted to take them home right away to put on their tree, while others wanted me to hang them up around the school!

  This coming week, we will be learning more about the Story of Christmas, the traditions of Nochebuena and Las Posadas. We will learn more about how Christmas is celebrated in Mexico...and I am excited to teach the children a little bit about some of the traditions that I had while I was growing up!!

12 Days of Christmas Reading... and a Button Christmas Tree craft!

   In light of what happened this past Friday in Newton, Connecticut, I was too heart broken to post  on Friday and offer up a Freebie. I will post it another day.
   As an Early Childhood teacher and a parent, all I can say is that I cannot even begin to imagine what those families are going through. My hearts, thoughts and prayers go out to each and every one of them during this very difficult time.

    It has become a sad world to live in, hasn't it?  It serves as a reminder of how precious life is and how we should always stop to count our blessings and never, ever take anything or anyone for granted.

   On that note, I will quickly share a new tradition that I started this year with my little munchkin. "12 Days of Christmas Reading". I wrapped up 12 books (most purchased from Scholastic, some were taken from my classroom stash and given to her). We began our Christmas Reading on Dec. 12... The first book she unwrapped was Little Critter: The Night Before Christmas!

  And here is another Christmas tree craft that she did this past weekend.  As I was cleaning house to prep for our family (who will be here this coming Saturday), I gave her some red & green buttons, a sheet of cardstock paper and some glue. I drew a triangle on it and told her to glue the buttons to make a tree.

And that was all I had to say! She knew how to start and went right to work!

         It was time consuming but she finished it all by herself!
Now, I need to go get another picture frame, b/c this one is definitely going on the wall!

Now to get settled for the night and get ready for the last few days of school before 

Christmas break! =)

(I will be back later this week with the FREEBIE I promised...it needs some tweaking!!)

Bit by the Christmas Craft Bug!

   This past weekend, I was bit by the Craft Bug and since I was in a Christmas-y mood, I pulled out some of my scrapbooking supplies and started to make a few simple holiday decorations for the house. 

 I only got around to completing one, but I am working on two more.

(Thanks to BHG for this cute and simple idea!)

   I guess my little one felt left out, because she later refused to let me go to the nail salon (which was something I needed badly) because she wanted to do “work”.

   So I pulled together some simple Christmas crafts for her to do.

   I cut up strips of different types of green scrapbook paper and she made a beautiful tree!

This tree will be going in a frame!

   And then we did some cutting practice as she made another tree! 

This is as far as she got and then she just wanted to snip away!

   She got a little carried away with the cutting, as you can see!

This evening, after dinner, she told me she wanted to do more work!  

I love it! I have TONS of cute and fun activities planned for her! 

As I prepare the house for my family in the coming week and a half and plan for the Winter Concert at my Head Start Center, I am also finishing up a little Freebie, that I will post by the end of the week- just in time for TBA's Freebie Friday!

Counting Christmas!

    My little munchkin has been counting down the days until Christmas! And I am not sure she fully understands the whole tradition of Christmas,..or if she is just counting down the days until our family is here!

   Anyhow, she has amazed me in her math skills lately! We read the book, “Counting Christmas” by Karen Katz and have been working on lots of fun math activities. 

   I took advantage of the sales on cyber Monday and found some awesome Christmas Center Packs!

   Here is the pack I purchased on TpT which I am featuring in this post.

   I loved these worksheets but since she cannot write numbers yet- I found an alternative way for her to use this worksheet. I used foam numbers and I was very impressed by how fast she completed the sheets!

   Then we worked a little bit on patterns. Umizoomi is one of her favorite shows at the moment and I heard her making patterns along with the show and she was kicking butt! =) So, I knew she was ready for a little pattern work!
   First we worked with some die cut shapes from my xmas stash. There is one of our shih-tzus watching her work! =)

       Then went on to the worksheets included in the math pack.

And then she made her own pattern:

 In my Christmas junk, I also found some stockings with numbers on them. I couldn’t remember exactly how I had used them ( I think they were counting mats), but I had her do some ordinal number practice and asked her to line them up and put the stockings in order. And BAM- she was done!

This is just a sneak peek of all the things we have been doing at home! 

Stay tuned for some more... and shhh... a FREEBIE is coming soon!!