Gingerbread Neighborhood

Now that the town was finished it is time to build our neighborhood! Each kiddo got to build their own house! We used milk cartons as the base and royal icing to glue the graham cracker wall together! The royal icing makes a huge difference! It dried hard in about 30 minutes! They used regular vanilla icing to hold the outside decorations. Each kiddo got to pick a lot on the map to claim!

 We love candy!!!

 After Gingerbread Candy Land was complete the only thing left to do was play!

I loved this project with the kiddos!  It was definitely overwhelming at first but I'm so proud of their great creative thinking!

Gingerbread Candy Land

Well after all of our Gingerbread Unit study we had to make our own Gingerbread community! My fabulous friend Mrs. Kelly started this idea last year and I LOVED IT! So this year I jumped in with her and Mrs. Russell! First we started by having the kids brainstorm a list of buildings and businesses they thought would belong in a gingerbread community! WOW listening to their suggestions was a blast! We had suggestions for a neighborhood, school,  Sprinkles National Park, an airport, bank, gas station, fire department, Pinch a Penny, Slinky's, jail, police department, candy shop, pizza parlor, ice cream truck, basketball stadium, a Wild Wild West (from the Gingerbread Cowboy), and a funeral parlor...just in case the gingerbread people fell in the lake! 

The beginning stages of construction...we started with the town! We used boxes of all shapes and sizes...and anything they could find in our craft cabinets!
Mackenzie starts work on her National Park area...

 Sophia and Xan teamed up to construct our airport! I love that Xan is taking his work very seriously :) He looks like a real mechanic here...

 

 Anthony and Reece work together to build our gas station...

 Nadia worked on the school...loving the red roof!

 Ava, Sasha, and Stella work on the candy shop! They used lots of pink and sparkles! My kind of building ;)

 Luke starting construction on the neighborhood Publix...no community would be complete without one!

 Jackson and Luke worked on the Funeral home...they even made a casket out of a cell phone box! Just in case any Gingerbread people fell in the lake! I love it!

 Nadia built Slinkys and Jacob and Diego built The Basketball Stadium.

 Here is an aerial shot of the basketball stadium! How cool is this? They built bleachers, basketball hoops, and even had a little ball they actually were playing basketball with!

 Parker setting up the Wild, Wild West! I had no idea what they would use the coffee filters for but they were PERFECT for Parker's Project!

  Parker and Ryan even added a sunset with the moon and some cowboys and cowgirls!

  

 Gavin and Preston worked on the Jail and Bank...they decided they should be close together so the criminals that rob the bank can go straight to jail! These little minds just make me smile!

 The school playground! Nadia designed a slide,  swing set, and monkey bars!

Luke's Publix...notice the $5.00 off coupon taped to the front! Love it!

Preston cutting up money to put in "Fluffy's Bank"

 The finished Funeral Parlor...fancy!

 The lovely candy shop! Look at the cute table and chairs!

 Gavin adding some trees to the neighborhood.

The next blog post will reveal the neighborhood construction! Stay tuned!

Gingerbread Unit

The month of December was a whirlwind! We had a blast reading through all of the Gingerbread stories. We have been working on using our schema and text evidence to make meaningful predictions about new texts. We compared each new story to the previous stories we had read! The kids really loved the different versions of this classic story!

Here are some of the books we read...We started with the original of course :)

 

After reading through these books we started using Venn Diagrams to compare two stories of their choice. They ROCKED this activity! Their goal was to choose any two books to compare using the Venn Diagram. They needed to have 3 examples in each category. They could choose to work in a group, partners, or independently! These pictures make me smile! Watching my firsties get EXCITED about filling out a Venn Diagram during their read to self time was so rewarding! They are really starting to work together and have deeper conversations about the books we are reading! I love it! We have a rubric for the kids to use while filling out their Venn Diagrams...I will have to add a picture of it later :)

 I love the way they page through the books together...and discuss their text to text connections!

 This is a great picture of Sasha and Ava discussing the Gingerbread Girl together!

 Check out Nadia! She was so proud to have 3 examples in each category...and she thinks she can have 4 if she has more time! I love it!

Throughout January we will continue to make meaningful predictions, and compare texts! Stay tuned for more awesomeness from room 212!

 

Holiday Cheer

During October our school has a tradition of "booing" other classrooms around the school. Bags are filled with goodies for the students and the teacher and mysteriously left outside classroom doors! When you get "booed" the tradition is to pass it along and "boo" another classroom. Just for good fun! Well we decided to carry this tradition into December by spreading holiday cheer and "jingling" various grade levels around the school. The kids were so excited to see what goodies were going in the bag each day! The kids took turns being the Christmas Elves and sneaking around the school to leave the goodies!