Our First Week of Holiday Travels

Throughout the month of December, we will be traveling to other countries to learn about different holiday traditions and celebrations.  Since you cannot travel to other countries without a passport, we began our theme by making holiday passports.  So far we have 2 stamps in our passports.

Our first stop with the Holiday Express was Germany.  While in Germany, we created a German (Advent) Calendar and decorated Tannenbaums.  You can also ask your favorite "K" Kids how to count to 10 and say "Merry Christmas" in German.

We read and sang different versions of the Gingerbread Man, and made puppets of the different characters to practice retelling the story.  When reading fiction stories, we are working with the story elements:  setting and characters.  We are also working on reading comprehension with retelling the beginning, middle, and end of the story.

Thanks to Jacob and family for sharing this traditional German Christmas decoration.

Our German (Advent) Calendar

Here we are decorating our class 'Tannenbaum".  It was so much fun that we decorated and undecorated it about 10 times?!

We each created our own 'Tannenbaum" to decorate the hallway.

This week, we also wrote letters to Santa with our 6th grade buddies.

 We are hoping that Santa will respond soon.

We also hopped on the Magic Holiday Bus and traveled to Holland.  Here are Mrs. Brockhaus' shoes for the trip.

We learned that children in Holland put their shoes out on their porch on Sinter Klaas Day (December 6th).  If the children have been good, they get candy and treats.  If they have been naughty, they get coal and rocks.  Here's a sample of our art project.  As you can see, this shoe is full of candy and treats!

Here's our note to Sinter Klaas.   We're going to put our shoes out at home and hope that Sinterklaas will make it to Nebraska!