Holiday Celebration

The students decided that the STAR at the top of the christmas tree should be our STAR rules for reading (Sit up, Track with finger, Answer on cue, Respect other) 

Religion has a tendency to come up during the holidays. I've done my best to expose my students to all religions. This week we talked about the story of Christmas, the story of Hannukah, St Lucia in Sweeden, Saint Nikolas who became Sainter Klaus who became "Santa Claus". These stories are important, they are history. You dont have to listen to just one. This lead to some great questions like "What is Yule?" "Where did Rudolph come from?"

During reading, some of the kids were still curious and discovered that Epic had some great Hannukah Stories. They found out about Latkes and Jelly donuts are eaten, I told them we could make Latkes later since they thought they sounded good.

I asked my students if I should let my babies believe in Santa Claus. They overwhelmingly said yes, even my student who didn't grow up with him.

We play christmas music with lyrics so they can practice reading to help them with a spelling word scramble. We talked also created a "Naughty" and "Nice" list for the books we read this year. (Island of Dr Libris, Flora & Ulysses, Malala, 13 story tree house, 11 birthdays, Miniature world of Marvin & James, Pax, Dory Phantasmagory...) They were unsure which one the Sharkodile should be on since he was naughty but also nice...

They have been writing their own Christmas Play for the show next week entitled the Naughty & Nice list. It should be very interesting how it turns out. They came up with the plot, characters, and dialogue. One student decided to change characters, so now we have to re-write it.