We got our first communication from our Romanian pen pals today! I feel a little bad since we haven't sent them anything yet; my students have been focusing on their NaNo stories. But next week we'll send them something! Our pen pals made a powerpoint with pictures of themselves doing a Christmas program (super fancy costumes) and playing football (aka-soccer) and with awards for something. There weren't too many words, but it was still pretty neat. We're going to write letters introducing ourselves and maybe send some pictures and/or videos of us doing stuff in a powerpoint. That's the plan anyway. They want to send a Christmas care package via mail, so I need to talk to their teacher about it first.
Our tree weaving projects are coming along nicely. I had them paint the background during read aloud... it took them longer to paint than I thought, which led to even more read-aloud time... something they were only too happy to accept. After lunch, we had art (no math today!) and set up the plate looms and got started weaving. It goes pretty fast. Some were almost finished at the end of art today. A few of the girls are double-weaving their projects, so they're doing it all in one color loosely, then weaving over it with another color. They're all pretty excited about their weaving skills. Now they want to make a huge loom, or I suggested weaving on a box. There's a bunch of shoe boxes in the hallway; we might make looms out of them. But it's getting closer to Christmas and with that comes Christmas present art projects. Mrs. B had a bunch of ideas. To tell you the truth, present-making projects hadn't crossed my mind! I'm glad I have her around to remind me of important stuff.
Another day of Christmas program practice, and another day of hearing my male students complain about gypped recess. Sigh. I am not looking forward to hearing these arguments day after day for the rest of December. After practice, we went to the gym and made food sculptures from the Food Drive donations we collected. My class had some last minute donations this morning... we had about 160 items from our classroom (one kid brought in a big box). Apparently I told them there might be a prize of extra recess. Since our class was obviously the winner of the classroom contest, my main recess supporter kept bugging and bugging, "Do we get our extra recess today? Do we? When do we get it? Is it time now?" Another kid thought we were getting a pizza party. I don't know where he got that idea!
The sculpture building went pretty well. We looked up pictures of sculptures on the internet... they can be super creative: Big Bird, Minions, a bus, the Hunger Games symbol, a giant piece of pie... the list goes on and on. Most of our little groups made crosses or buildings. One group made a basketball. Another made a baby. A different group made a chef Boyardee guy almost as tall as a kindergartner! Then we put all our food together to make giant letters: ILS, and we stood behind them and took an all school picture. And had ice cream afterward as a snack.
Now my classroom is tidied up, the shades are drawn, my desk is in order... I think I am ready to get out of here! Have a Happy Thanksgiving!
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