It's All About Family

For many working parents, it becomes a challenge to find time to come to the classroom. In an effort to bring families together in our class, we have a holiday lunch each year in Dec. This is a pot luck lunch where everyone is welcome (including extended family). There is nothing better than families getting to know eachother. This year we had 20 our of 26 families able to join us for our grand celebration. Here are some highlights from our lunch:

It's a Busy Time of Year

For Kindergarten teachers at Chets Creek, the time between Oct. and winter break seems to fly by. Between our Pumpkin unit, Pow Wow, holiday celebrations, and assessments we are continuing to find a way to keep an academic focus and still enjoy the season. At our school, the PTA sponsors a silent auction for holiday items that are made from each class. This auction is held in our lobby and takes place for about a week and a half. This year, our class decided to make ornaments and use them to decorate wreaths. In an effort to involve the kids as much as possible, we decided to make dough ornaments, allow kids to decorate them, and then have them do a functional piece of writing (How to...) to describe the procedures for making the ornamants. What fun this turned out to be! While we were making the dough, we had one child taking the pictures and another child writing the steps on the board with the help from the class. Here is a glimpse into this fun activity!

First we put two cups of flour into a bowl.







Next we added 1/2cup salt to 3/4 cup water and stirred it until it dissolved.






Then we mix it all together with our hands and make it into a ball.











Roll out the dough.








Then cut it out with a cookie cutter.








Make sure you have someone who is writing down the steps as you are doing it. That way you don't forget.






THEN TAKE THEM HOME AND BAKE THEM AT A LOW TEMPERATURE UNTIL THEY ARE HARD AND DRY.


Paint your ornament and let it dry.








Then you are done.