Saturday, December 8, 2012

Native Americans

     We had a great time listening to one of our parents who came and played the Native American flute. 


We also enjoyed learning how the Native Americans lived off the land.  The "Museum
of Man" came and told us stories and brought hands on items that were made from Native Americans. 


Shapes


We made cubes with mini marshmallows and toothpicks.  We finally finshed up our shape centers.  
 

Our Gingerbread Houses


Gingerbread Fun!

Check out some of our Centers. 
 









 
 
 

 We made a pie graph of which part of the gingerbread cookie we bit first.

 We analyzed our data. 
 
We played I have...Who  has...with ten frames. 
 
 
We brainstormed all the things we could make from flour. 
We made homemade playdough.


 
After exploring with our dough, the children came up with action words.  What can you do with playdough?  We can squeeze, roll, smash, cut, stretch,   the dough.  

 
We read If you Give a Mouse a Cookie and sequenced the story.  We wrote our very own cause and effect sentences. 


 
 
 
 

Learning Maps with the Gingerbread Man

We started out our Gingerbread Unit learning about houses and neighborhoods, of course that's where the story all started in a house right?  We made our houses, then together made a neighborhood.


 
We live in a house in a neighborhood.  The neighborhood is part of a city.
We made a city.  We added environmental print to our buildings to make
our city come to life. 
 Love the cow!
 
Check out the Book Mobile!


Our City!
 
 We read many different versions of the Gingerbread Man and compared each story.

 
We made a map of the Gingerbread's adventures using arrows and the words: right, left, up and down.  The children made their own maps and explained their maps with each other.  


 
After learning about cardinal directions, we played North, East, South, and West.  It's kinda like four corners.  We labeled our room and replaced the words on our maps from the day before up, down, left and right with north, east, south and west.  The children drew a compass rose on their Gingerbread maps. 

 
 
We read the story, The Gingerbread ManLoose in the School.
 
 
 
We decorated a 10 inch cookie to eat. 
 

 
 
 But when we returned from washing our hands so we could eat the cookie, the cookie had disappeared!!!!!
 The children were devasted and said that it was all my fault, I left the room and didn't close the door.  They ran around the room, screaming, "Jinge, Jinge, where are you?"  They couldn't believe that the "legend" had come true. 

They decided to make "Missing Posters" of Jinge. 

 
The next morning, Jinge had left them a note with a map and directions.  The children had to read the map and go find Jinge.

 


We found Jinge!  Come to find out, Jinge had left the classroom to go find the nurse to get all bandaged up (when we first took him out of the box he was broken).  We sure can't eat our new friend now.  Everyday, the children tell me, "Don't forget to close the door!"