Category Archives: Christmas

December 5, 2012 · 8:22 pm

Sinterclaas and the Elf!

Today Sinterclaas left a treat for our class. I am a first generation Canadian as my parents emigrated to Canada in 1952. We brought some customs that we still celebrate today! One of my favourites is Dutch Christmas. So, today I brought my wooden shoes to school. The children learned to count to 10 in Dutch and say Merry Christmas. Sinterclaas must have noticed because when we put my wooden shoes outside our classroom door, Sinterclaas came! He brought little treats for the children along with special gingerbread cookies called speculaas, some gumdrops, and chocolate letters. Lots of fun.

The Elf and Gus built a castle out of the blocks last night and played with some of our dinosaurs! Take a look! The children brainstormed some names for the elf and the elf is going to let us know what her name will be in the morning!

We decided to take our silent reading up a notch and used the iPads and our headphones and listened to the stories on the I Like Books app again today. It is hard to tell which story is their favourite! I like this program because as it reads the story the words are also highlighted.

They look focussed, don’t they!

The iPads are Here Again!

Today was awesome! The iPads for the iPad project arrived today! I definitely did a happy dance! I unpacked them from the cart and we got started right away! I wanted to have the children get oriented with the iPads and we had a talk about how we need to take good care of them. Then we got started!

The first program I showed them was a favourite of mine from last year’s project called Doodle Buddy! Doodle Buddy is an awesome tool for drawing and writing. I use it for almost anything. This morning and this afternoon we used it to draw, do some spelling, and make some patterns in math!

First we learned how to use the tools in this program to draw. Here are some samples of their work! Love that glitter pen!

We also did some spelling and simple word families using Doodle Buddy. Basically we used the ipads as our own personal whiteboards! Works just great!

Later in the afternoon, we used Doodle Buddy to make simple patterns using the stamps. We just used the Christmas ones. After the children had started their patterns, we got up, went to a friend’s iPad and continued their pattern. Lots of fun and learning too!

We also worked with an old favourite from last year called I Like Books. It has a lot of different stories that the children can either listen to, read with, or read by themselves. I had the children use their headphones from the computer lab to listen to the stories. Why didn’t I think of that last year! It worked great.

This last weekend, I picked up a really cool headphone accessory! It allows five headphones to plug into one iPad! Really worth it!

See, wasn’t it an awesome day!

Math Fun!

I couldn’t wait! I am worse than the kids! I like Christmas. So I got out some of the Christmas stuff. We only have 15 teaching days in December so I needed to get a head start! We did some math with the new Christmas counting materials and workspaces. Too much fun! The children had to copy down and solve all their friend’s addition stories.

We also had our first visit to our new computer lab. It is AWESOME!

And we started learning some new Christmas vocabulary! The children did a great job on their booklets and read them to the student teachers who came to visit, observe, and help today!

Hopefully, they will read them to you, too!