Mrs. Youngblut's Gingerbread People

Merry Christmas!

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Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

Gingerbread Decorating/Storybook Players

Grinch Day!

Christmas Around the World

Today we celebrated Christmas Around the World. We went to Mrs. Van Horn's room, Mrs. Backlin's room, and Mrs. Ferrell's room.


In Mrs. Van Horn's room, we learned about Christmas in Australia. We learned:
-It is summer instead of winter and they don't have snow.
-When you throw a boomerang, it comes back to you.
-There is an island close to it with a Tazmanian Devil on it.
-There are lots of kangaroos in Australia.
-Every day it is hot.
-It is a small country.
-They use the boomerang to trip or knock out animals.
-Santa arrives in a bathing suit.


In Mrs. Backlin's class we learned about Christmas in Brazil. We learned:
-They have fireworks at Christmas.
-They don't have stockings. They use a shoe.
-They don't have snow.
-They call Santa Papai Noel.


In Mrs. Ferrell's class, we learned about Christmas in Mexico. We learned:
-They have a fiesta, or party, there.
-They have a flower called a poinsettia.


In our classroom, we learned about Christmas in the Netherlands, or Holland.
-Their Santa is called Sinterklaas, and he is skinny.
-They put out wooden shoes instead of stockings.
-Sinterklaas has a helper who goes down the chimney. His helper's name is Zwarte Peite.
-Sinterklaas arrives in a steamboat, and rides a white horse in a parade.
-They celebrate Christmas two times. On December 5 and 6, they give gifts. On December 25 and 26, they have family time.
-December 6 is Sinterklaas' birthday.
-They speak Dutch. We said the months of the year, days of the week, and numbers to 10 in Dutch.
-They are known for wooden shoes, windmills, and tulips.
-They like to ice skate in the winter because they have lots of water.
-They have a celebration called "Midwinter Horn Blowing". Men blow horns that are 3-4 feet long over a well.
-You have to be in the royal family to be the king or queen.
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Gingerbread Fun

This week we spent time reading a variety of books about gingerbread. We used four of the books to do a special group project. Each group got one of the books. They had to figure out the characters and setting for the story. They also had to write a short summary of the book. The last thing they had to do was find the repeating phrase used in the story. All of these were put together on a large paper gingerbread house. The kids had a great time making them, and they turned out great!

Wrapped Up in a Good Book

We wrote a festive book report about one of our favorite books. We decorated them to look like Christmas presents. The report included the title, author, picture of our favorite part of the story, and a written description of our favorite part. We even got to rate the book from 1-5 gifts!

Christmas Tree Walk/Gingerbread Cards

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Earlier this month we went on our annual Christmas Tree Walk. We went to the Opera House to view LOTS of different trees. We couldn't believe all of the different ways people decided to decorate their trees!

We are part of a holiday card exchange, so we made 24 cards to send all over the United States. We even sent one card to Canada! We will be receiving cards back from them throughout the month. Our cards were made with sandpaper and paint. We decided it was very strange cutting the sandpaper. It did make them look like real gingerbread men though.

Since we were having so much fun making the gingerbread men, we decided to make even more cards. We sent them to Holiday Mail for Heros. The cards will be distributed to service members, veterans, and their families.

Gingerbread Glyphs

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We did a neat activity that combined crafting with math! First, we had to answer questions about ourselves. Next, we used our answers to create a gingerbread person that told about us. This is called a glyph.

The gingerbread's hair tells when our birthday is. The color of the eyes tells whether we are a girl or a boy. The mouth tells what we think is the best pet. The buttons tell what we like to do. The stripes on the arms and legs tell how many brothers and sisters we have.

The day after we made these, we got someone else's gingerbread person. We had to look at how they decorated it to write about them. We got to know someone else in our classroom this way.

I Am Not a Turkey!

Harley's Elf



Lauren's Cheerleader



Amber's Penguin



Tyler's Rock Star



Trista's Hannah Montana



Bethany's Chicken



James' Spartan



Anna's Cinderella



Cole's Johnny Cash



Shaelyn's Hunter



Trentin's Darth Vader



David's Hula Dancer



Maddy's Fairy



Kaden's Pumpkin in a Pile of Leaves



Damian's Indian

Apples and Pilgrims

Today we used three different kinds of apples to learn about fractions. We cut the apple into two pieces and then we had two halves. Next, we cut the halves in half again and had fourths. Then we cut the fourths in half and had eighths. We wanted to be able to try each kind of apple so we needed 16 pieces. We cut the eighths in half to get 16 pieces.

The three kinds of apples we tried were Golden Delicious, Braeburn, and Granny Smith. We made a graph of our favorite apples. Not everyone liked the same apples. 13 students liked the Granny Smith the best. One student chose the Golden Delicious. No one chose the Braeburn apple as their favorite.

We are also talking about the first Thanksgiving. We talked about the Mayflower. It is the boat the Pilgrims sailed to the New World in. The Pilgrims used a chamber pot to go to the bathroom. There wasn't very much room on the Mayflower, so the Pilgrims could only bring a few things with them. They didn't take a bath or shower for 66 days! We found out they ate hardtack, which is a hard, dry biscuit. There were 102 passengers on the Mayflower.

Pumpkin Fun

Today we watched a movie about Spookley the Square Pumpkin. The other pumpkins teased him because he was not round like them. In the end, being square saved all of the pumpkins. Spookley was the hero. He learned that being different wasn't so bad after all.

Pumpkin Fun
We got into partners or groups of two or three. Each group got a pumpkin. First, we guessed how many seeds we thought were in our pumpkin. Next, we dug through the gooey insides of the pumpkins to get the seeds out. Then, we put the seeds into piles of ten to make counting them easier. We were surprised to find out that the pumpkin that weighed the most had the smallest number of seeds!








Sums of 10
We practiced making sums of ten playing a game with cards. We had to match the number we picked up with the number needed to make a sum of ten.

Today we made comics of Charlotte's Web. We went on the computers to make them. First we picked the template. Next we picked the background. Then we added the characters. The last thing we did was add the speech bubbles. The speech bubbles let us know what each character was saying.

We listened to the rest of Charlotte's Web. We found out that Charlotte dies at the fair. Wilbur was sad that his friend died. Templeton used his teeth to get Charlotte's egg sac. Wilbur took it back to the farm. In the spring, the eggs hatched. Three of the baby spiders stayed. Their names were Nelly, Joy, and Aranea. The other spiders flew off.

We got in pairs and wrote as many words as we could think of about Charlotte's Web. We typed them into a program called Wordle. We made pictures with the words.

We wrote 5W poems about Charlotte's Web. We picked a character and wrote poems about them answering the questions Who? What? When? Where? and Why?

Tux Paint

Today we used a program called Tux Paint. We painted pictures about Charlotte's Web. It was really cool using Tux Paint.

We now have a class pet. It is a caterpillar. We gave it grass. We named it Brownie.

We played a pumpkin game. We had to roll the die. The number it rolled on told us which pattern block we could put on our pumpkin to make a face. If we got a 1, it was lucky and we got to pick any piece we wanted to. If we rolled a 6, it was unlucky and we had to take a piece off.

In math we learned about fact families.There are three numbers in a fact family. You use the three numbers to make two addition sentences and two subtraction sentences. If you have the numbers 1, 4, and 5, the addition sentences are 1+4=5 and 4+1=5. The subtraction facts for the fact family are 5-1=4 and 5-4=1.

Fire Safety Day

Yesterday the firefighters came to visit our school.

This is what we learned:
Amber - We learned to stop, drop, and roll if you catch on fire.
Anna - We found out that they get water from the hydrant.
Kaden - There is a thing that hooks onto the hose to make soapy water. Sometimes they need soapy water when a car is on fire.
Bethany - They have a big thing that is like a swimming pool. They put water in it.
Trista - It holds 2,000 gallons of water!
David - We got to go in the truck and look at the inside of it.
Shaelyn - They taught us to never go in a house if it is on fire.
Trentin - If your house is on fire, run out of the house and ask your neighbors for help.
Cole - They put on the siren.
Harley - They carry a chainsaw on their truck.
Tyler - When your room is smoky, you need to get down and crawl.
James - Never light a match and put it on the floor.
Maddy - Never play with matches!
Julian - Don't play with fire.
Lauren - Never mess with sparks.
Damian - Never light a firework in the house.

We have been so busy, we haven't had time at the end of the day to add to our blog. We are going to try to make time every day to write from now on though!

Today we read that Charlotte is going to the fair with Wilbur. It is going to be time for her to lay her eggs while she is at the fair. Templeton is going to the fair because he wants to eat candy and food while he is there. The crickets let everyone know that summer is going away.

In math we learned about the doubles +1 facts. These are problems like 7+8, 4+5, 5+6, 8+9, 1+2, and 3+4.

We also took our second NWEA test. We talked about doing our best on the test, so our parents and teachers know what we can do.

The Days of the Week

We have been talking about the days of the week and the difference between weekdays and weekend days. We made a pictograph of our favorite days of the week. We also talked about which day was our favorite day and why it was.

Catch Up!

We have been so busy that we haven't had time at the end of our day to catch up on our blog. We will need to get back to making the time!

This past week, we used Play-Doh to make our spelling words. We had lots of fun doing it. We found out there are many ways to make the words. Some of us had the words standing up. We could make them fat, skinny, flat, and many other ways. It was lots of fun practicing our words with Play-Doh.