Ginger Cookies and the Festival of Lights

Oh my goodness! I cannot believe it is almost Friday! I thought for sure this first week back after having a week off would go by so S-L-O-W, instead it flew by. We were very busy this week getting started on all of our holiday activities.

We continued our gingerbread unit with some tasty writing. Each student was given one gingerbread cookie that they COULD NOT eat! Boy, was that hard for a few of them.

First, we used our senses of sight, touch and smell to fill out our gingerbread chart. The kids gave me adjectives to describe the cookie. Here is our chart:

Then, I told the kids to take one bite of their cookie and put it down! What? You said one bite? That's right! I wanted to graph where they each took their first bite of their cookie. Today we wrote about our gingerbread cookie experience and used some of Lori's activities in her freebie gingerbread unit. (Click on the picture to grab a copy). They used so many adjectives to "pump up" their writing. It was great to see how excited they were to put their ideas down on paper.

Next week, we are going to start our Hanukkah unit. I love teaching the kids about different cultures and holidays. Hanukkah is a great one to teach the kids about because we get to eat potato pancakes (latkes), play games (dreidel) and learn new traditions. The kids love it! I just finished putting together these literacy and writing activities which we will be using throughout the week.

We are going to taste latkes and graph how we like to eat them and do some data analysis with our information. We are going to work on main idea and details with the story Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins by Eric Kimmel. Each student will make a menorah. The middle candle (shammes) will have the main idea and the other candles will have the details on it. (You can use the menorah patterns for any Hanukkah story). Here is a sample:

If you would like a few activities to help introduce Hanukkah to your students, click HERE to check out this little unit.

What are you doing in your classroom to celebrate the holidays? I would love to hear your ideas. Have a great Friday!