Merry Christmas

Hope all are having a wonderful and blessed Christmas
See you back in the classroom kiddos on January 3rd - enjoy your break!

Author Visit

On Friday morning, New Franklin had the pleasure of hosting a local Shippensburg author by the name of John Graham. It was an amazing experience for everybody. I didnt tell the kids until that morning what was happening (they had been talking briefly about it in library class though). Their react?

"A REAL LIVE AUTHOR!?!?"

"He is truly coming to see US?!?!"

"This is AMAZING!!!!"

(and a WHOLE bunch of screaming!)

Off to the library we trot to hear a book called No Sweets for Santa written by John Graham (a book that we actually learned was 11 years in the making)

If you are interested in checking out the book and learning more about it

visit his website No Sweets for Santa

That afternoon we were finishing up our Christmas Junie B. book Jingle Bells Batman Smells P.S. So does May and one of the children asks "When is the author of Junie B. going to come visit us?" haha

Same & Different

In Math and in Reading, we have been talking about how things are the same and how they are different.
In Math, we compare shapes, buttons, children, etc.... and we observe how things look alike and how they look different. Today we did a craft (thank you SO much to Miss Julie, Mr. Cubbage, and Miss Confer who came in to help with our project. Wet glue and glitter is sometimes a dangerous combo to a 5 year old HAHA) to test our skills on being able to tell how things are the same or different. Using just some paper, a cardboard roll, and our handprints, children were given the choice to make either an angel or a reindeer for the Christmas season. Here is our end results:

reindeer

angels

"How are these two crafts the same?"

• they both use our handprints
• they both used paper
• we made them out of a cardboard tube

"How are these two crafts different?"

• one is an angel, the other is a reindeer
• the angel is white, the reindeer is brown
• the angel has glitter
• the reindeer has googley eyes

In Reading, we look at different stories and see how they are the same or different (compare & contrast). The easier way to do this in Reading is to find two different versions of a book (the characters are slightly different, the story is told from a different perspective, etc...) Some of my favorites are:

• The Three Little Pigs/The TRUE story of the Three Little Pigs
• The Little Red Hen/The Little Red Hen makes pizza

Today, for our appropiate holiday season, I chose The Gingerbread Man (one we read a few days ago) and The Gingerbread Girl

A little background info. I am sure that you are all familiar with The Gingerbread Man story (runs away from the little old man & the little old woman, plus a bunch of other characters only to end up being eaten by a devious and sneaky fox at the end of the book). For those of you who have never read The Gingerbread Girl, you are in for a treat! The lonely old woman and the lonely old man decide to bake a girl this time, but when they open the oven, she runs off like her brother did. Never fear, this smart cookie has a plan to outfox the fox. Will it work? You betcha! She takes a piece of her licorce hair, ties the fox's mouth shut and teaches him some manners to turn him into a pet :-)

"How are these books the same?"

• They both have cookies made out of gingerbread
• there is a little old man and little old woman
• there is a fox who tries to eat them

"How are these books different?"

• one is a girl, one is a boy
• the fox doesn't eat the girl
• the girl runs past a school, an artist, and a lady walking dogs

I encourage you to challenge your child to find things that are the same and different with common everyday objects you find at your house. As you can tell, they are pretty good at it :-)

Ship girls have left the building

In case your child hasnt mentioned the fact, besides Miss Miller (who will return next semester to be a student teacher), we have had 3 other placement students from Shippensburg University with us this fall. This week has been their last week in our classroom before it is off to take finals next week and then a relaxing month winter break in between semesters (aaah, I think that is what I miss most about college! haha)
Wednesday we said good-bye (for now) to Miss Silvis and Miss Fischer (both sophmores and their first year in my kindergarten classroom)
Yesterday we said goodbye to Miss Bergan (a junior who I worked with last year and who will, fingers crossed, be coming back next year as my pro-sem & student teacher) who brought us yummy brownie cookies and candy canes. We also said good-bye to Miss Miller who cannot wait to return next semester as a student teacher.
It will be a lonely month without our Ship girls, but I am oh, so proud of all the hard work that they have been into this semester. They made great relationships with the children and myself and we cannot wait to see them in Janaury!

I have some good news & some bad news

Well, like the title states and I said to the kids this morning "I have some good news and I have some bad news. I will tell you the bad news first so the good news will cheer you up!" (this is what my Mama always said to me and this is what I say to my daughter now)

Bad News:
Hunter Middaugh has left our room and gone to a new classroom unexpectedly :-( Yesterday his Dad came to pick him up without warning or notice and told us that their family is moving to St. Thomas. We will miss him GREATLY and hope that he meets lots of new friends at his new school and has a good time learning with his new teacher

Good News:
Today our University student Miss Miller got to be our teacher ALL DAY LONG! Her school assignment for this semester was to pretend to be Mrs. Eckenrode's "sub" for the whole day. Miss Miller was a little nervous & anxious, but as the day wore on it became crystal clear that she had nothing to be worried about. She did a FANTASTIC job!
Miss Miller will be with us for three more days (tomorrow, next Tues, and next Thurs) before she leaves for her winter break. She will be returning to our classroom in January where she will visit us each day and be our student teacher. We are very blessed to have her!