Our last month before holiday break was short and sweet—but filled with fun! We headed on a fieldtrip to Nibble Chocolate the first week of December 2024, where we got to sample delicious sweets, take a tour, and learn about chocolate-making! The second week was our holiday party and ‘Secret Santa’ giveaway. Finally, our students left for break but got to follow along with Miss Marisa and her pups (Styles & Luka) on their cross-country road trip adventure via the ‘Dog Blog’! Here’s our recap of the month:
Monthly Highlights:
- Nibble Chocolate — We’re always searching for new and exciting things for our students to do for fieldtrips! As a suggestion from a parent, we headed to Nibble Chocolate! While the space was a little small (especially when we were joined by another, unplanned group and random cat 🐈🙈😅) we were able to taste all different kinds of sweets and learn the process of making cacao from farm to cup! We also got to tour the space, which was neat!
[Watch our recap video below! ↓]
[Watch Miss Marisa unbox holiday gifts! ↓]
“Gala” (Mondays + Wednesdays):
- Phonics, Spelling & ELA (English & Language Arts): This month, we jumped back into our spelling packets, specifically working on our ‘rainbow writing’—tracing and writing words multiple times to build letter-patterns—with gel pens, markers, and colored pencils. We also did some engaging activities with our words, like creating “Silly Sentences” accompanied by a picture, of course! Other monthly activities included phonics practice, vowel ‘stations,’ and short reading passages.
- Math & Reasoning: A big focus for this month was making math fun! Since December 2024 is a relatively short month, we dove into more holiday-related activities, specifically winter, snow, and reindeer-themed addition/subtraction, 10 more/10 less, counting, and greater than/less than. Our students especially loved our coloring fact pages and ‘station’ activities where they had to move from table to table doing different math activities!
- STEM/Social Studies: As this was such a short month, our activities centered around holidays and learning about different traditions of classmates, as well as vocabulary words like culture, heritage, and customs.
“Slice” (Mondays):
- English & Language Arts: We doubled-down on our writing this month, using fun activities like ‘Reindeer Writing,’ (a writing activity where students had to create their own reindeer, name him/her, describe him/her, and write about a day with him/her) in order to meaningfully build writing skills. Some of the ideas our students came up with were really neat!
- Math & Reasoning: Two big areas of focus this month were fractions and shapes. We learned about partitioning shapes, how to create equal ‘cuts’ of a shape, and the language to use (ex: halves, thirds, fourths, etc.). Our students also practiced with money (labeling and counting), and building automaticity with their place value, too.
“Honeycrisp” (Tuesdays):
- English & Language Arts: This month we worked on figurative language, parts of speech, and developing our writing/building writing stamina! One of the neat things about this month is that our student, Landon, created an ‘alternate ending’ activity for us for The Wild Robot! And after a little creativity and printing from Miss Marisa, all the students got to journal with his idea! We also started laying the foundation for our next ELA unit, narrative writing, in December 2024!
- Math & Reasoning: Our multiplication and division practice continued this month, now diving deeper into facts and working on strategies for memorization and quicker recall! We also did some fun holiday-themed work, and specifically a ‘time lapse’ activity where students spun a spinner to figure out and record how much time was spent on different Christmas-related activities.
“Slice” (Thursdays):
- Morning “Slice”: This month we got to mix up our reading comprehension activities with short passages on winter animals, namely the arctic fox. We also did some fun “Would You Rathers” (holiday-themed, of course!) to help work on our reading, speech, and quick decision-making skills! One of the fun things about the ‘Would You Rather’ activities is that students have to pick a side and then argue for their position! In math, all of our stations were winter-focused, and we specifically did some units on time, money, and expanded form of hundreds numbers.
- Social Studies: As this month was small, we did a mini-activity on the history of Christmas trees, learning about where the tradition started, what the significance of trees are, and whether real or artificial trees are better for the environment. As this activity was cross-curricular with STEM, our students really got into defending their positions on artificial vs. real (and had some great justifications, too!). We also talked a lot about culture, traditions, and different winter holidays celebrated around the world, as well.
- STEM: In our STEM class this month, our focus—and hands-on lab—was all about friction! Students learned what friction was, why it’s helpful in some cases and harmful in others (ex: helpful when driving to give us the opportunity to break but harmful when we’re trying to roller-skate quickly!), and even created their own ‘ramps’ to test different objects of varying friction and how their ramps could help/hurt their item speed.
Other December 2024 Updates:
- Holiday Break & The ‘Dog Blog’! — We headed into break, but the learning didn’t stop! To keep students engaged over the holiday, Luka & Styles (the dogs) posted a daily activity (writing, drawing, or math) on their digital ‘blog.’ This was a way to connect with the students as well as share our cross-country road trip! 😜
✨→ You can see the full Dog Blog here!
- Secret Santa! — We tried a ‘Secret Santa’ gift-giving this year, and it turned out to be pretty fun! Students were randomly assigned a person to get a gift for ($5 or less) and it was kept a secret until our holiday party! At the party, we played at the park, had snacks, and before everyone left, did a gift exchange on the middle of the blacktop! Students also got bag tags and washable stickers to take home (from me!) too. [See my recap video here!]
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