Christmas Play

Last month, the students presented a Christmas play. We called our play A Nativity Story. We sang seven songs and learned two of the songs in ASL. Here are the students in their costumes. I made most of the costumes; they are pull over vests. I bought the angel, Mary, Joseph, and shepherd costumes from the Oriental Trading Company. The students wore all white or all black under their costumes. They looked so cute!

I decorated the walkway up to the school with paper bag luminaries.

We decorated this tree with ornaments that the kids colored. The ornaments had a picture of the child who made it in their play costume.

The students made these cute candy can "J"s our of Crayola Model Magic. I found the poem online. I gave each student a 1 inch square of white and red Model Magic and they rolled the Model Magic into a snake. Next, the students laid the two snakes next to each other and twisted them together. Finally, they made the Model Magic into a "J" shape and let it dry for 48 hours. I attached the "J"s to the paper with ribbon.

I bought these program covers at LifeWay Christian Store and printed the information for the program on them.

My room moms set up this area for refreshments.

We borrowed this Nativity set from our preschool as well as the wall hanging in the next picture. 

This is the set for the field where the shepherd were.

 This is the main stage. Next year, I want to build a manger out of wood. 

 This is the Bethlehem scene that the three kings stand in front of.

These are the inns that Mary and Joseph stop at before they reach the stable.

It was a beautiful play!

Five Little Owls

We made this book as a class. It is called Five Little Owls. We made this book as part of our Little Owl's Night  literature unit.

Advent

We made these cute advent wreaths last week to help us prepare for Jesus' birth. The kids made fingerprint holly berries on their wreaths.

At our religion center we have advent candles that we light during prayer time each morning. When we light the candles, we sing the song Light One Candle. Here is the first verse:

Light one candle for hope.

One bright candle for hope.

He brings hope to every heart, 

He comes! He comes!

Below is a picture of our classroom religion center. I change the table cloth for the different liturgical seasons; right now the table cloth is purple because we are in the season of Advent.

We also have an advent calendar. We open a new door each day during calendar time.

We also have an Advent chain. Each link has a name that Jesus is called in the Bible such as The Good Shepherd, Savior, Prince of Peace, etc... We remove one link each day and I ask the kids to tell me some of the names of Jesus that were on previous links.

Our Christmas play is coming up in a few days. Look for the post about our play soon. 

Literature Study: Little Owl's Night

We just completed our second literature study. We read the book Little Owl's Night by Divya Srinivasan. I created some activities for the students to do that correlated to the book and the standards that I teach.  After we read the book, we did the following activities: 

Art:
We made Little Owl out of construction paper.

Science:
Since the book takes place at night, we talked about the night sky and stars. We made this big dipper project. First, the students used water colors to paint the sky on a sheet of white paper. Next, I drew dots to show where the kids should place their star stickers. Then, the kids placed their star stickers on the dots I drew. Finally, the kids connected the dots with a pencil.

We also talked about parts of an owl and made this owl craft. After we made the owl craft, we cut apart a strip of words and glued them onto our owls.

 Here is the pattern:

We also made a list of all the animals in the story and classified them as nocturnal or diurnal.

We made a chart about owls.

Reading:
We reread Little Owl's Night in small groups. This student is using one of our homemade pointers. 

Language Arts:
We made a list of all of the animals in the story and put them in ABC order.

Math:

We counted the animals on each page of the book and made a tally chart.

 We used the tally chart to make a bar graph.

Cooking:

We made owl cookies for our cooking lesson.

Music and Poetry:

We learned the song Great Big Stars and learned the ASL signs to the song. 

Great big stars, way up a yonder.

Great big stars, way up a yonder.

Great big stars, way up a yonder.

All around the world gonna shine, shine.

All around the world gonna shine, shine.

In the picture below, the kids are signing "big".

Here the students are signing "stars".

Here the students are signing "up".

The students are signing "all".

The students are signing "around".

The students are signing "world".

The students are signing "shine".

The students had so much fun during our literature study of Little Owl's Night!

Fall Acrostic Poems

Each year, I have the kids write acrostic poems for fall. The kids get a list of words to choose from and then they fill out a paper with pre-printed letters on it that either spell out Fall or Autumn. Here are a few of the completed poems.